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I've recently set up my Windows 2008 R2 server afresh, and I've just reinstalled MinimServer. It's working well though I did have one curious network issue which affected MinimWatch, and a couple of observations on using Task Scheduler to start up MinimServer.

Task Scheduler:

I have created a scheduled task to run on startup to run minimserver. It's now working, but I experienced two problems. First, I needed to set the Program/script field explicitly to "C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe". At first I set the field to just javaw.exe, but found that task schedule ran the copy of javaw.exe that java installs in the system32 folder, in which case minimserver doesn't start successfully. It's an identical version of javaw.exe.
The second problem was that I didn't realise you're not supposed to use quotes in the Start In field. My working task scheduler settings are:

Program/script: "C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe"
Arguments: -jar mserver.jar
Start In: C:\Program Files\MinimServer\lib

Networking issue:

With minimserver running fine on the server and minimwatch running fine on a windows 8 laptop, I opened the laptop in the morning (it woke from sleep) and the minimwatch icon was grey. A couple of hours later, it went green. Something had happened on the network, as at the same time, a video I was watching froze. Here's yesterday's minimwatch log, it's at around 10am that the icon went green. I'm interested to know what might have caused this. It's been green ever since, but sometimes the 'minimserver is running' speech bubble pops up out of the blue, and presumably something on the network is triggering this.
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Thanks,

Matt
(16-08-2014 22:28)MnM Wrote: [ -> ]I've recently set up my Windows 2008 R2 server afresh, and I've just reinstalled MinimServer. It's working well though I did have one curious network issue which affected MinimWatch, and a couple of observations on using Task Scheduler to start up MinimServer.

Task Scheduler:

I have created a scheduled task to run on startup to run minimserver. It's now working, but I experienced two problems. First, I needed to set the Program/script field explicitly to "C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe". At first I set the field to just javaw.exe, but found that task schedule ran the copy of javaw.exe that java installs in the system32 folder, in which case minimserver doesn't start successfully. It's an identical version of javaw.exe.

Can you say more about what you mean by "doesn't start successfully"? If MinimServer appears to start but isn't visible on the network, this is probably an issue with the Windows firewall. If you look at the list of allowed programs, you will probably find that C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe is on the list but the system32 copy of javaw.exe isn't.

Quote:Networking issue:

With minimserver running fine on the server and minimwatch running fine on a windows 8 laptop, I opened the laptop in the morning (it woke from sleep) and the minimwatch icon was grey. A couple of hours later, it went green. Something had happened on the network, as at the same time, a video I was watching froze. Here's yesterday's minimwatch log, it's at around 10am that the icon went green. I'm interested to know what might have caused this. It's been green ever since, but sometimes the 'minimserver is running' speech bubble pops up out of the blue, and presumably something on the network is triggering this.

I checked the log. When you resumed MinimWatch at about 8am, MinimWatch didn't receive any network multicast discovery announcements for MinimServer. At about 10am, these announcements arrived.

I have problems like this sometimes. It is related to the network adapter in the PC. A quick workaround if Refresh doesn't work is to disconnect from the wireless SSID and reconnect. If you're using a wired adapter, you can disable and enable it. There's nothing that MinimWatch can do to correct this problem.

I also get the balloon message sometimes. One day I will spend a few hours digging into exactly why it appears. I have done a bit of investigation and it appears to be caused by MinimServer and MinimWatch temporarily losing connectivity for some reason.
Excellent, thanks Simon. I'll experiment with allowing the system32 version of javaw.exe through the firewall (hadn't appreciated the firewall discriminated so finely), as that may well have been the problem. If that works, then I guess using the system32 version must be the right way to do things: the benefit is that it's always the latest version, and so the task scheduler action would no longer be tied to a particular java release. The scheduled task wouldn't then need to be changed following any upgrade to java 8, for example.

Also if using the system32 version of javaw.exe, I think the scheduled task could just be changed to exactly the same command as used by the minimserver shortcut, which would be (trivially) a little tidier:

Program/script: mserver.jar

I'll give it a go and report back.

Thanks,

Matt
I changed the firewall rules for javaw.exe to apply to the system32 version instead and now have success with these scheduled task settings:

Program/script: javaw.exe
Arguments: -jar mserver.jar
Start In: C:\Program Files\MinimServer\lib

Thanks for the suggestion,

Matt
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