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Post New Requests Here / IDEA: See if a user is logged in
« on: April 14, 2009, 10:35 AM »
We have 50 Windows XP patron stations in our university library. I'd like to create an onscreen map showing which stations are available for use -- no one currently logged into them. All users log in by a domain username.
I found PSTOOLS: psloggedon.exe which I can use if I were to create this page on a Windows webserver, but I'd rather use a Linux solution.
IDEA: I envision a very small app (very small memory footprint) on the patron station that would run when the user logs in (either by the START group, or AD user login script). This app would respond with a simple string like 'yes' when contacted over the network on a certain port. When the user logs out, the app would naturally stop running.
Example using port 5432: http://lib-patron-2:5432
This way, I could easily use wget in PHP in Linux and then parse the results and display a nice floor layout showing which stations were available.
I suppose an alternative is for the app to always run, and return 'no' when a user is not logged in, and 'yes' when one is.
If you know of an already existing app that can do this, which I can call from Linux, please let me know. Otherwise, I'd love to have an app like described above.
If you think there is a better way to do it, let's talk about it.
I found PSTOOLS: psloggedon.exe which I can use if I were to create this page on a Windows webserver, but I'd rather use a Linux solution.
IDEA: I envision a very small app (very small memory footprint) on the patron station that would run when the user logs in (either by the START group, or AD user login script). This app would respond with a simple string like 'yes' when contacted over the network on a certain port. When the user logs out, the app would naturally stop running.
Example using port 5432: http://lib-patron-2:5432
This way, I could easily use wget in PHP in Linux and then parse the results and display a nice floor layout showing which stations were available.
I suppose an alternative is for the app to always run, and return 'no' when a user is not logged in, and 'yes' when one is.
If you know of an already existing app that can do this, which I can call from Linux, please let me know. Otherwise, I'd love to have an app like described above.
If you think there is a better way to do it, let's talk about it.