Re: How do I keep an application from being started morethan once?

Question

Here are some quick ideas. None of them should be too hard to implement,
although each has some drawbacks.
1. Have a login server track who is logged on, and if there is already a
logon for a given user or a given machine, then deny the application
startup. The nice thing about this is that a user will not be able to have
multiple logins even by going to another machine. Then again, this may not
be so nice, and you also get a possible single point of failure on the
login server for which you will have to prepare.
2. Drop to the operating system, and get a list of processes for the client
machine. If the name of one of them matches the name of application that
is being run, then deny startup. This avoids a network hit, but requires
some OS specific code. Also, a clever user could change the name of an
executable to get around this. Note that a user could have another login
on another machine.
3. Write to a file on the local machine. You can hide the file in some
suitable place, and can also scramble some information so that a user
cannot get around having this file present by reading from the file at
startup and then writing to it. Based on the state of your application,
the file will have some scrambled information indicating if an instance of
an application can be started. If you retain the write lock (i.e. do not
close) the file for the duration of the application, you increase your
security at the risk of a confused user if the application gets terminated
without releasing the lock. Depending on the OS where the client will run,
this could be an issue. If you like this option, perform some experiments
first on all configurations of an example client machine to determine the
behavior. Again, this only works to prevent an extra login on a single
machine, not system wide.
If you are not concerned about your users hacking around too much and don't
care about a login on another machine, I would opt for some version of
number 3. Otherwise, I would venture number 1.
Regards
CSB
At 07:47 AM 2/18/98 -0500, Martin G Nystrom wrote:
A user can launch an application, then launch it again. How do we make it so
that the user can only run one instance of the application?
Martin Nystrom
Eli Lilly and Company
([email protected])
Curtis Bragdon, Senior Consultant, Forte Software
[email protected]
Voice Mail: [phone]
Paging: [phone]
"I've seen dozens of triggering towns." - Richard Hugo

Answer 1

Yet another quick and dirty solution is to use local ExternalConnections.
This is a single instance per machine solution.
Example is attached.
(See attached file: TestOne.pex)
[email protected] on 02/18/98 10:01:07 PM
Please respond to [email protected]
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: How do I keep an application from being started more than
once?
Martin,
there are two ways to read your question
(a) no more than one instance of an application per machine
(b) no more than one instance of an application per "user"
now if a user has only one machine, and your system has "userids" and you
only want
one active "session" per "user" then the distinction is irrelevant.
However, many systems
let people share logins, so a token based thing enforcing one login will be
problematic.
The downside of #1 approach suggested by Curtis happens when a machine gets
hosed without "logging" the user off the security system, then they can't
get in until their ticket expires or a sysadmin gets involved. Should be
manageable, however. But this enforces one application
instance per user, unless you check both for the presence of an active
token for that user as well as the presence of a token tied to that
particular node name. Otherwise there is nothing to prevent the same user
from launching the app again and logging in as a different user. This is
definitely the best approach of the bunch, and can be adapted for either
(a) or (b).
Suggestion # 2 won't work unless the application is built as a compiled
client,
since the process name will be 'ftexec' and not the "name" of the
application. And it doesn't
prevent a user from launching the app from a different machine (or people
sharing logins). So again it depends on what you are trying to achieve.
#3 also only prevents multiple instances per machine, not necessarily by
user. Of course
most people don't have multiple machines. The point is that you may be
trying to
prevent your users from sharing logins. In which case the file thing won't
do it.
Some other ideas:
1. You could, however, enforce one application per machine using the
installed partition agent's ExecutingPartition instrument name. As long as
the user doesn't run the app in a different environment, you can have the
app check at startup time if there is another
ActivePartition running under the same InstalledPartition name.
(ActivePartitions are child agents
of InstalledPartitions).
2. use the ObjectLocationManager and bind a simple object into the naming
system using a naming scheme such as
/MyApplication/MyNode or
/MyApplication/MyUserId
the presence of either one would indicate that another instance of that
application is running on either that machine or that user. Of course
these have to be cleaned out, and subject to similar downside as
alternative #1. So you'd essentially be using the forte naming system as a
distributed lock manager (ouch).
3. Have the application remove the shortcut to launch it upon startup, and
recreate it when it is finished, or move it to a hidden place. There it
is - the worst idea I've ever come up with. Don't
do this!
Regards,
John
From: Curtis Bragdon <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:36:58 -0500
Subject: Re: How do I keep an application from being started more than
once?
Here are some quick ideas. None of them should be too hard to implement,
although each has some drawbacks.
1. Have a login server track who is logged on, and if there is already a
logon for a given user or a given machine, then deny the application
startup. The nice thing about this is that a user will not be able to have
multiple logins even by going to another machine. Then again, this may not
be so nice, and you also get a possible single point of failure on the
login server for which you will have to prepare.
2. Drop to the operating system, and get a list of processes for the client
machine. If the name of one of them matches the name of application that
is being run, then deny startup. This avoids a network hit, but requires
some OS specific code. Also, a clever user could change the name of an
executable to get around this. Note that a user could have another login
on another machine.
3. Write to a file on the local machine. You can hide the file in some
suitable place, and can also scramble some information so that a user
cannot get around having this file present by reading from the file at
startup and then writing to it. Based on the state of your application,
the file will have some scrambled information indicating if an instance of
an application can be started. If you retain the write lock (i.e. do not
close) the file for the duration of the application, you increase your
security at the risk of a confused user if the application gets terminated
without releasing the lock. Depending on the OS where the client will run,
this could be an issue. If you like this option, perform some experiments
first on all configurations of an example client machine to determine the
behavior. Again, this only works to prevent an extra login on a single
machine, not system wide.
If you are not concerned about your users hacking around too much and don't
care about a login on another machine, I would opt for some version of
number 3. Otherwise, I would venture number 1.
Regards
CSB
At 07:47 AM 2/18/98 -0500, Martin G Nystrom wrote:
A user can launch an application, then launch it again. How do we make itso
that the user can only run one instance of the application?
Martin Nystrom
Eli Lilly and Company
([email protected])
Curtis Bragdon, Senior Consultant, Forte Software
[email protected]
Voice Mail: [phone]
Paging: [phone]
"I've seen dozens of triggering towns." - Richard Hugo
John Jamison
Vice President of Technology
Sage IT Partners, Inc.
415 392 7243 x 306
[email protected]