NANY 2011 Release: NetLaunch

[kyrathaba]

Nice job, kunkel!! 

[mouser]

Just got around to trying NetLaunch, i think it has some great possibilities..
I ran into a couple of issues:

• 1. An occasional random crash -- i can provide details if you can't reproduce.
• 2. An error message about not understanding what "DoNothing" action means.  Funny how computers have a hard time understanding "do nothing", i've never had a problem understanding that myself -- in fact i'm quite good at it.
• 3. Both 1+2 may have to do with the fact that the "what to do" action should be a "Drop Down List" in windows control parlance, rather than a "Drop Down"; the difference being that the former only allows user to choose among those items listed, where the latter also allows user to type in random text.

[mouser]

Another question is how it decides whether the network is up or not.. With multiple network adapters it would seem like the way to do this is either to let user select the adapters/networks to test for up/down, OR test interenet connectivity in general.  Not sure what NetLaunch does..

[wraith808]

I had that same question when I was using it... I ended up disabling my wireless on my laptop, as it seemed to think that the network was up, even though the wireless wasn't actually connected to anything when I yanked the ethernet cable.

[kamahl]

1. An occasional random crash -- i can provide details if you can't reproduce.

-mouser (January 07, 2011, 10:05 AM)

That would be wonderful.

2. An error message about not understanding what "DoNothing" action means.  Funny how computers have a hard time understanding "do nothing", i've never had a problem understanding that myself -- in fact i'm quite good at it.

That would be a slight mistake on my part.  I recently changed to enums from Strings, and may have accidentally left a space somewhere.

3. Both 1+2 may have to do with the fact that the "what to do" action should be a "Drop Down List" in windows control parlance, rather than a "Drop Down"; the difference being that the former only allows user to choose among those items listed, where the latter also allows user to type in random text.

Agreed.  I'll make the adjustment.

Another question is how it decides whether the network is up or not.. With multiple network adapters it would seem like the way to do this is either to let user select the adapters/networks to test for up/down, OR test interenet connectivity in general.  Not sure what NetLaunch does..

I tests all available interfaces, excluding preset blacklisted adapters (virtual and VPN adapters)

I plan on making this blacklist configurable.

[mouser]

I tests all available interfaces, excluding preset blacklisted adapters (virtual and VPN adapters)

and after testing all, how do you conclude if network is up or not? is it that if ANY adapter is up, the network is considered up?

this would be the main thing that could prevent the program from actually being usable for real world scenarios, since it could be pretty common that some network adapters will show as up when the user considers their network (internet?) down.. maybe the solution is being able to specify what network adapter to test, or whether the test should be done simply by pinging a web page, etc.

[steeladept]

Okay, I have a halfway completed screencast (actually it is completely done, except for one tiny clip showing it actually in action), but now all of a sudden it keeps crashing with a system.invalidoperationexception.  It is primarily in 1.0, but I tried 1.0.1 and it is having the same issue.  Any ideas?   Any direction on what else to look for that may help?  I can recreate it and get the system dump information if that will help any.

Note, there was no patches or changes applied that I know of and it did work fine previously.

P.S.  Man, no matter how much I try to plan how long a screencast takes, it is 2 to 3 times longer to actually accomplish.  This is harder than I thought it would be.  Good to learn though.

[kamahl]

and after testing all, how do you conclude if network is up or not? is it that if ANY adapter is up, the network is considered up?

-mouser (January 08, 2011, 12:29 PM)

Yes.

this would be the main thing that could prevent the program from actually being usable for real world scenarios, since it could be pretty common that some network adapters will show as up when the user considers their network (internet?) down.. maybe the solution is being able to specify what network adapter to test, or whether the test should be done simply by pinging a web page, etc.

I do have framework for using pinging for the test, I just never implemented any way of turning it on.
I shall do so now.

All of a sudden it keeps crashing with a system.invalidoperationexception.  

-steeladept (January 08, 2011, 04:39 PM)

Unfortunately that's not very helpful on it's own.  I have had this error before (Due to a race condition when updating an app *during* the launching phase), but that has been fixed.

It is primarily in 1.0, but I tried 1.0.1 and it is having the same issue.

1.0.1 was purely cosmetic changes, so I'm not particularly surprised

I can recreate it and get the system dump information if that will help any.

That would be wonderful.

P.S.  Man, no matter how much I try to plan how long a screencast takes, it is 2 to 3 times longer to actually accomplish.  This is harder than I thought it would be.  Good to learn though.

Feel free to take your time.

[kunkel321]

Hey Kamahl,  It turned out great!  I'm glad somebody made you a screencast.  I was thinking about it, but won't be able to.
I cleaned up that gif a little.  Will attach to this post.  The actual file is from DrawPlusX4, wich is proprietary, but if you want I can export is as some type of cad file...   That's all--take care.

[steeladept]

Ack, came back to see if you posted a comment about my issues and I missed it.  Found that my post with the full error report never posted! 

So anyway, I will post now with my appologies that I didn't verify I posted them sooner.

Error Event 1

Event Type:   Error
Event Source:   .NET Runtime
Event Category:   None
Event ID:   1026
Date:      1/22/2011
Time:      1:51:22 PM
User:      N/A
Computer:   COMPUCAMEL
Description:
Application: NetLaunch.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.TypeInitializationException
Stack:
   at NetLaunch.Prefs.loadprefs()
   at NetLaunch.Program.Main(System.String[])


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....om/fwlink/events.asp.

Error Event 2

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    .NET Runtime 4.0 Error Reporting
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    5000
Date:        1/22/2011
Time:        1:50:25 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    COMPUCAMEL
Description:
EventType clr20r3, P1 netlaunch.exe, P2 1.0.0.0, P3 4d1fe555, P4 uk5dpioa, P5 4.0.0.0, P6 4d3b26f0, P7 6, P8 165, P9 system.invalidoperationexception, P10 NIL.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....om/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 63 00 6c 00 72 00 32 00   c.l.r.2.
0008: 30 00 72 00 33 00 2c 00   0.r.3.,.
0010: 20 00 6e 00 65 00 74 00    .n.e.t.
0018: 6c 00 61 00 75 00 6e 00   l.a.u.n.
0020: 63 00 68 00 2e 00 65 00   c.h...e.
0028: 78 00 65 00 2c 00 20 00   x.e.,. .
0030: 31 00 2e 00 30 00 2e 00   1...0...
0038: 30 00 2e 00 30 00 2c 00   0...0.,.
0040: 20 00 34 00 64 00 31 00    .4.d.1.
0048: 66 00 65 00 35 00 35 00   f.e.5.5.
0050: 35 00 2c 00 20 00 75 00   5.,. .u.
0058: 6b 00 35 00 64 00 70 00   k.5.d.p.
0060: 69 00 6f 00 61 00 2c 00   i.o.a.,.
0068: 20 00 34 00 2e 00 30 00    .4...0.
0070: 2e 00 30 00 2e 00 30 00   ..0...0.
0078: 2c 00 20 00 34 00 64 00   ,. .4.d.
0080: 33 00 62 00 32 00 36 00   3.b.2.6.
0088: 66 00 30 00 2c 00 20 00   f.0.,. .
0090: 36 00 2c 00 20 00 31 00   6.,. .1.
0098: 36 00 35 00 2c 00 20 00   6.5.,. .
00a0: 73 00 79 00 73 00 74 00   s.y.s.t.
00a8: 65 00 6d 00 2e 00 69 00   e.m...i.
00b0: 6e 00 76 00 61 00 6c 00   n.v.a.l.
00b8: 69 00 64 00 6f 00 70 00   i.d.o.p.
00c0: 65 00 72 00 61 00 74 00   e.r.a.t.
00c8: 69 00 6f 00 6e 00 65 00   i.o.n.e.
00d0: 78 00 63 00 65 00 70 00   x.c.e.p.
00d8: 74 00 69 00 6f 00 6e 00   t.i.o.n.
00e0: 20 00 4e 00 49 00 4c 00    .N.I.L.
00e8: 0d 00 0a 00               ....   

Everything else was in one of those reports for Microsoft, but I was unable to copy any of them out of the "view report" except by taking a great many screenshots.  I believe, though, that they really won't help you anyway.  They looked like OS related errors rather than application errors, though they may be related....

[wraith808]

^ You might want to edit those to take out your computer name... I usually do when I post things on a board.

[kamahl]

Ack, came back to see if you posted a comment about my issues and I missed it.  Found that my post with the full error report never posted! 

So anyway, I will post now with my appologies that I didn't verify I posted them sooner.

Everything else was in one of those reports for Microsoft, but I was unable to copy any of them out of the "view report" except by taking a great many screenshots.  I believe, though, that they really won't help you anyway.  They looked like OS related errors rather than application errors, though they may be related....

-steeladept (January 22, 2011, 12:59 PM)

uhh...  Congratulations? You've got an error I didn't know was possible, let along existent in my code..
Can you upload the Settings.xml located in

• %userprofile%\Appdata\Local\Kamahl (Vista/7)
• %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Kamahl (XP)

And you can fix the bug by renaming the file. (I still want to see it though)

[kamahl]

What improvements?
Also, I should probably ask about whether you decompiled my executable.

[wraith808]

I think that the post should be removed.  An unknown participant with a link to an executable based off of another?  *I* wouldn't trust it.

[kamahl]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking