ALoginSVC

Version 1.0
Copyright 2000 University of Wisconsin - Madison, CAE Center
Released as Freeware

What is ALoginSVC?

ALoginSVC is an NT service designed to increase performance of our ALOGIN32.EXE program. This service will poll the specified NetWare servers for their connection counts. When a ALOGIN32 client asks for a server to use, the ALoginSVC program will respond with the least used file server.

What is required to use ALoginSVC?

To use ALoginSVC, you will need an NT Machine (server or workstation) to run the service. You will also need to run the MRTGEXT.NLM on the file servers that you wish to poll.  If you want the service to be able to determine if logins are enabled on the file server and if the NDS Database is open, you need to be running version 1.31 of the MRTGEXT.NLM or later. The MRTGEXT.NLM can be found at http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~drews/mrtg/ and the ALOGIN32 program can be found at http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~drews/software/alogin32/

Getting ALoginSVC

You can get the ALoginSVC from here. The source to the program is also available here.

Installing ALoginSVC

To install the ALoginSVC, do the following:

  1. Configure the ALOGINSVC.INI file as desired.
  2. Copy both the INI and EXE file to your NT machine's WINNT\SYSTEM32 directory.
  3. Run ALOGINSVC -i to install the service.
  4. Start the service via the control panel.

To remove the service, use the -u option to uninstall it.

Checking the Status of ALoginSVC

Administrators can check on the ALoginSVC status by using telnet to the port specified in the INI file. After entering the password you can check on the servers status and enable/disable servers. You can also tell the service to re-read the config file. By doing this, you can change the servers to poll, the telnet password, the MRTG Port and the delay between polls. You can not change the UDPListenPort nor the TCPListenPort without restarting the service.

The ALoginSVC.INI File

The INI file has two sections and they are described below.

[servers]

This section defines what servers the service should poll. You should have the DNS names and the server name be the same. Also, the service should be able to find the NetWare servers without using the full DNS name. That is, the machines default name resolution should include the domain where the servers are.  This is because the name of the server returned to the client machines needs to be just the server name for ALOGIN32 to work properly.

Here is an example for this section:

[servers]
count=3
server1=caeapps1
server2=caeapps2
server3=caeapps3

The count parameter specifies the number of servers in this INI file. The server<n> entries specify the server names to poll.

 

[service]

This section defines how the service will act. An example for this section is:

[service]
UDPListenPort=1666
TCPListenPort=1667
MRTGPort=9999
Password=
DelayBetweenPolls=60

The UPDListenPort specifies what port it should listen on for ALOGIN32 requests. This needs to be the same as configured in the ALOGIN32 program.

The TCPListenPort is the port the service should listen to for incoming telnet connections. This allows administrators to telnet to the machine and check on the status of the service.

The MRTGPort is the port that the MRTGEXT.NLM is listening on.

The Password (if specified) will be the case-sensitive password requred to gain access to the telnet service. If no password is specified, then no password will be required when you telnet to the TCPListenPort.

The DelayBetweenPolls entry specifies the delay in seconds that the service should wait between polling the servers for connection counts.

 

Version History

Version 1.0