how to fork a Windows exe

[Bill N]

Hi,

Just wrote my first puppet module for Windows  provisioning. All is working well except I am having a problem running a windows exe file in that Puppet appears to wait for the exe to complete. At least this is the case when I run Puppet agent --test from the Windows Server command line.

What I want to do here is install a set of files for a Riemann monitoring client on several Windows Server 2008 R1 VMs. These files include an exe, which I want to start and run in perpetuity. I don't want Puppet to wait for this process to complete. It appears I could run the exe in a separate shell using cmd.exe, but when I try that on the command line I do not see the named process running in the Resource Monitor. I only see cmd.exe running. This is not very informative.

My question is, what is the best way to run this executable via Puppet? Should I convert the exe to a Windows service, install that and run it as a service? Should I use shell cmd and live with the unhelpful Resource Monitor listing? Or should I use Power Shell to fork the process like I would in linux?

Any help would be most appreciated.  

[Brian Mathis]

AFAIK, Windows does not have a true "fork" capability.  Here are some ideas that might help:

- Use srvany (or something else) to define a custom service.  It sounds like this is probably what you really should be doing anyway.  Puppet is not meant to control programs over a long term (i.e. services), it's meant to setup other things that control them.  The Windows service framework is meant to do that.

- Create a schedule task to run your command

- Use the "start" command to start the process.

❧ Brian Mathis

@orev

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[Kevin D]

Sounds like your best option would be to run it as a service.