Hservice + Hserver On Windows

[kodiak]

Long time no post..but let's see if it's successfull this time

I'm trying to build a network based Houdini installation (ie all files stored on the network, startup mechanism setting up related variables, storing user/siteconfig profiles on the network..etc).

As Houdini requires hservice to be launched as a service, I'm using hservice.exe (provided by Edward on the SESI forum). The license server lives on a different computer, so that's not an issue.

If I do these on a local drive (without Houdini being installed locally, hserver removed as a service) then it works fine.

If I move over the exact same configuration on a Windows network share (Windows backend+workstation, tried both XP and XP64) then for some reason it doesn't start (hservice reports that hserver.exe couldn't start). I know, Linux..unfortunately it's not my decision

Any ideas?

thanks

Andras

[edward]

Hi Andras,

I don't really have any clues but did it install? Maybe Windows does let you install services which are over a network share in the first place? (Security purposes?) You might have to copy the files locally to the machine.

[kodiak]

Hi Edward,

It was a combination of two things:

- by default in recent windows (I think SP2 has an effect as well on XP) the permission to install services as a normal user was restricted, adding this to the domain group helped

- looks like there is another issue with the mapped drives and the way windows generates relative paths from them. The drive mapping was resolved as \servername\share\..etc instead of a full UNC path so obviously it couldn't find it (it's not an issue with the local drive)

So the solution was to specify UNC paths for both hservice and hserver (as the parameter for hservice), this way it works fine. Now time to crack on with the rest of siteconfig

thanks for the help,

Andras