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Date:	Mon, 22 Dec 2014 03:03:02 +0300
From:	Andrey Repin <anrdaemon AT yandex DOT ru>
Reply-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-ID:	<3610637631.20141222030302@yandex.ru>
To:	"Kertz, Denis (D)** CTR **" <d DOT kertz AT alcatel-lucent DOT com>,
	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject:	Re: Can't Run Excel From A Cron Job Under Windows 7
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Greetings, Kertz, Denis (D)** CTR **!

> I am trying to port a cygwin application that uses cron from a WinXP PC to
> a Win7 Pro PC and I find some cron jobs won't run.  Specifically, I need to
> run an Excel program from a cron job and this doesn't work on my Win7 PC.

For posterity:
Turned out, this has nothing to do with cygwin (predictable), and actually has
to do with how Windows (Vista+) manage services (namely: lack of access to any
GUI, unless you create one for yourself).

The issue has been discussed, for example, at serverfault.com[1] and relevant
MSDN article is [2].
The solution could be to create a stub application, which will make all
necessary calls and then launch your GUI application in prepared environment.

[1] http://serverfault.com/questions/101671/scheduled-tasks-w-gui-issue
[2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687105(VS.85).aspx

> In order to run an Excel program from cygwin I have this run.excel bash
> script with an embedded VB script that executes an Excel program:

>         excel=$1
>         vbscript=/usr/tmp/$$.vbs
>         cat <<-! >$vbscript
>                         Dim xlApp
>                         Set xlApp = CreateObject("Excel.application")
>                         Set xlWb = xlApp.workbooks.Open("$excel")
>                         xlApp.Quit
>                         Set xlWb = Nothing
>                         Set xlApp = Nothing
>         !
>         chmod 777  $vbscript
>         c:/Windows/System32/wscript.exe  'c:\cygwin64\usr\tmp\$$.vbs'

> An excel program is run like this:

>         run.excel  'c:\Shared\Bin\Create_Daily_Scorecard.xls'

> When I run an Excel program interactively with this run.excel script it
> runs just fine but when I run it via a cron job Excel just hangs.  When
> Excel hangs I can look at the processes running on the PC using the Windows
> Task Manager and I don't see the EXCEL.EXE process.  But when I check the
> option to show processes from all users I see the hung EXCEL.EXE process,
> AND the user name displayed is my login.  So I am running this under the
> Upar2 login and Task Manager doesn't display EXCEL.EXE as a Upar2 process
> but when I check 'Show processes from all users' it shows EXCEL.EXE running
> under user name Upar2 - a contradiction.

> What I suspect is happening is Excel is attempting to do something that
> requires Upar2 permission but it isn't really running as Upar2 so Excel
> displays some error message and is waiting for the user to respond.  But
> Excel is running invisibly so this can't be seen.

> I also suspect this Upar2 "confusion" isn't limited to running an Excel
> program.  I can run a cron job with regular UNIX commands (cut, sort, etc)
> and see they are running with the ps command.  But when I try to kill them
> (kill -9) I get permission denied.  If I want to kill a process running via
> the cron I have to start cygwin with 'Run as administrator' and then I can
> kill processes running under the cron.

> So, does anyone know what's going on here and what I need to do get these
> cron jobs running.  As I noted at the beginning this is being ported from
> WinXP, where all this works fine, to Win7.

> I set up cron using cron-config like this:

> $ cron-config
> Do you want to install the cron daemon as a service? (yes/no) yes
> Enter the value of CYGWIN for the daemon: [ ]

> Do you want the cron daemon to run as yourself? (yes/no) yes

> Please enter the password for user 'Upar2':
> Reenter:
> Running cron_diagnose ...
> ... no problem found.

> Do you want to start the cron daemon as a service now? (yes/no) yes
> OK. The cron daemon is now running.

> Denis


--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon AT yandex DOT ru) 22.12.2014, <02:37>

Sorry for my terrible english...


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