Execution

The program is implemented as a system tray application, and will only allow a single instance to run at a time. It goes through an ordered list of the server-side services required by LANDesk Management Suite, Security Suite, Server Manager, Process Manager, and Handheld Manager, checking each for service startup type. Those with a startup type of Automatic are added to a monitored services list, and if the list is too short the program exits with a message that the computer may not be a core. The managed service list is then checked on a regular basis (every five minutes if all is well, every 90 seconds if services are requiring restarts). Message boxes and Windows Event Viewer logs are used to notify the administrator of downed services and restarted services. The icon color is changed to show general service status: during a service check loop, grey means normal, yellow means that services are being restarted, and red means services cannot be restarted.

When restart is enabled (the default option), each service check which finds a downed service will attempt two restarts before alerting that the service cannot be restarted.

The system tray icon may be right-clicked to produce a menu of options: This includes shortcuts to the droppedpackets.org website, the Windows Services management screen, and the Windows Event Viewer, as well as toggles for service restart and Management Gateway monitoring, as well as commands to initiate a service check loop, stop all services, or exit the application. Toggled options may be set on the command line as well. Hovering over the system tray icon will show the number of pending scans in the ldscan folder in a tooltip.

The Stop All Services option causes the service check loop timer to be set to 60 minutes, and causes all services in the monitored list to be stopped. The system tray icon is turned yellow, and a balloon tip is presented to notify the user that work is in progress. Each service stop is attempted up to three times; if a service still shows a running status after three stop attempts, an alert message is shown. Stopping all services may take a long time, depending on the installed products and the load on the server. If all services are successfully stopped, the icon turns red and a message box is presented. Clicking OK exits ldms_status. To restart services, simply start ldms_status again, and its service check loop will restore the services in the correct order.

Every tenth service check loop is preceded by a count of the pending scans/tasks in LDSCAN, XDDFILES, and SDSTATUS. If any of these is greater than 200 files, a warning message is displayed; the Inventory Service will also be restarted if restart is enabled. The scan file count is also triggered by hovering your mouse over the system tray icon.

Typical usage

Recommended usage is to create a shortcut in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Startup folder. If the core uses a Management Gateway, the shortcut should use the -gateway=1 option.

The program is designed to run on the core, and assumes that LANDesk administrators will be logging in interactively via RDP or similar.

Antivirus Exclusion

You may need to exempt ldms_status.exe from your antivirus program; I've seen McAfee and eTrust cause problems. Apparently they don't like things that check the status of services. If the event viewer is full of activity statements like "Can't restart   service", or the icon flickers rapidly from color to color while spewing balloon tips too fast to read, that's your problem.

Command-line switches