LAUNCHER can be run as an application or a system service in the Windows environment. The following sections provide specific information about LAUNCHER as an application or system service, as well as information that is general to LAUNCHER, regardless of the implementation being used.

Installing LAUNCHER in a Windows Operating System

You can install LAUNCHER (as an application or system service) on a PC by using the SETUP program in the root directory of the INSTALL share. You must explicitly choose the option to install LAUNCHER because it is not installed by default.

There are two installers available for LAUNCHER:

Only one instance of LAUNCHER (as either an application or system service) should be used at a time to avoid failure.

Using the LAUNCHER Application

Parameters for a Windows Operating System

LAUNCHER opens a dialog box to indicate that it is running and to provide an interface to terminate it. The LAUNCHER application must be run with command line parameters, which will be parsed using the following syntax:

──┬─────────────────┬─┬─<IP address>─┬─────────────────────────────────┤
  └─ / ──<password>─┘ └◄────────────◄┘

If <password> is specified, any user of SYSTEM/NXSERVICES/PCDRIVER must specify the same PASSWORD.

LAUNCHER will only accept TCP/IP connections from the specified IP addresses. If LAUNCHER is to process requests from multiple MCP systems, all their IP addresses should be listed. Also, if any MCP system has more than one IP address, they all should be listed.

Running LAUNCHER at System Boot

This method enables LAUNCHER to run when the Windows system starts without a user logging into the system and is useful for certain types of automated processing. However, it does not support user interaction with the programs run by LAUNCHER.

This method uses a startup script managed by the Windows Group policy snap-in as described at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753404.aspx.

Perform the following steps to add a script:

All supported versions of Windows render the LAUNCHER dialog box and launched application dialog run in the background and are invisible to users.

Using the LAUNCHER System Service

The LAUNCHER system service runs the LAUNCHER program as service. This enables LAUNCHER to run in the background and listen continuously for requests from the MCP until it is stopped by using the Stop LAUNCHER Service option. The LAUNCHER system service has a system tray icon which can be used to do the following:

Add or Remove Servers

LAUNCHER only accepts requests from the servers listed on MCP Servers dialog box. All other connections are rejected.

To add or remove a server, do the following:

Change a Server Password

You can use the LAUNCHER service to change a password that is associated with an MCP server.

To change a password that is associated with an MCP server, do the following:

Start LAUNCHER Service

The LAUNCHER service opens a TCP/IP connection to listen for requests from the MCP servers listed on the MCP Servers dialog box.

To start the LAUNCHER service, do the following:

Stop LAUNCHER Service

To stop the LAUNCHER service, do the following:

Exit LAUNCHER Service

To exit the LAUNCHER service and remove the icon from the system tray, do the following:

LAUNCHER Usage Recommendations and Examples

The following topics provide general information about LAUNCHER on Windows.

Usage Recommendations

While a PC is running LAUNCHER, it is recommended to not use it from the keyboard for other purposes. This would avoid the following potential problems:

Consider LAUNCHER as a means of turning a PC into a peripheral for an MCP system.

Examples for LAUNCHER Running on Windows PCs

The following two WFL jobs assume that LAUNCHER (as either an application or system service) is running on a PC which has a DNS name of tr-russcf.tr.unisys.com, and that LAUNCHER was run with a password of frog. They also assume that the PC has PKZIP software installed in directory C:\PKZIP.

Job ZIP/ALGOL copies the symbol file of the ALGOL compiler to the PC, zips it, and copies the result back to the MCP system:

BEGIN JOB ZIP/ALGOL;

RUN  SYSTEM/NXSERVICES/PCDRIVER(
   "test.tr.unisys.com"                                 &
   "[PASSWORD = frog]"                                  &
   "REMOVE ALGOL.ZIP;"                                  &
   "REMOVE ALGOL.TXT;"                                  &
   "TEXTDATATOPC [SEQUENCENUMBERSONPC=TRUE] "           &
   "  SYMBOL/ALGOL ON NI00 ALGOL.TXT;"                  &
   "RUN [RESULT=0] C:\PKZIP\PKZIP ALGOL.ZIP ALGOL.TXT;" &
   "BINARYDATAFROMPC UPLOAD/ALGOLZIP ALGOL.ZIP"         );

END JOB

Job UNZIP/ALGOL copies the file produced by ZIP/ALGOL to the PC, unzips it, and copies the result back to the MCP system:

BEGIN JOB UNZIP/ALGOL;

RUN  SYSTEM/NXSERVICES/PCDRIVER(
   "test.tr.unisys.com"                                       &
   "[PASSWORD = frog]"                                        &
   "REMOVE ALGOL1.ZIP;"                                       &
   "REMOVE ALGOL.TXT;"                                        &
   "BINARYDATATOPC UPLOAD/ALGOLZIP ALGOL1.ZIP;"               &
   "RUN [RESULT=0] C:\PKZIP\PKUNZIP ALGOL1.ZIP;"              &
   "TEXTDATAFROMPC [SEQUENCENUMBERSONPC=TRUE,FILEKIND=ALGOL]" &
   "  UPLOAD/ALGOL ALGOL.TXT"                                 );

END JOB

The final example uses MCP Redirector to access a PC which has a DNS name of tr-russcf.tr.unisys.com, has a share named blit exported, and has a user account of User Name joe and Password user which has access to the files in the directory exported by share blit.

BEGIN JOB UPLOAD/HINTS;

RUN  SYSTEM/NXSERVICES/PCDRIVER(
   "\\test.tr.unisys.com\blit "                    &
   "[CREDENTIALS=JOE/USER]"                        &
   "TEXTDATAFROMPC [FILEKIND=SEQDATA,UNITS=WORDS," &
   "                BLOCKING=10,OVERFLOW=FOLD] "   &
   "    UPLOAD/HINTS HINTS.TXT");

END JOB