The v1.2 update just released contains the full functionality of my app ShutdownUnless v2, with the added ability for automatic scheduling.
What is ShutdownUnless? A function to schedule a daily or weekly reboot or shutdown of your PC or server, UNLESS a certain condition is true. Useful to shut down workstations at night, or reboot a server once a week to keep it running fresh, you have the option to configure this function to only shutdown/reboot if certain processes aren’t running, or certain files do not have open handles to them from local or network processes. You can optionally terminate processes and stop services prior to the shutdown/reboot operation, and force hung apps to close. It also sends an optional email on the operations success or abortion, and if aborted, the reasons why (e.g. this file was left open, this process was running, etc.)
One usage case is to schedule a weekly reboot of your server – but ONLY IF your Quickbooks database is not open by a local or network copy of the software.
Another usage case, for example with an old Server 2003 running AD and Exchange, you will want to stop the Exchanges services prior to initiating the shutdown/reboot operation, so that a race condition doesn’t occur in which the server may lock for 15-20 minutes after the operation is initiated (a documented bug on Technet) due to AD shutting down before Exchange (which relies on AD queries during it’s shutdown processes.)
The online manual is now stocked with the configuration details on this new functionality.
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