Process management using VI server

[Lee Robertson]

All,

I am using the VI Server running as a built application on remote machines to start and stop VI's as needed. The built application is just a dummy while loop that gives me a running instance of the VI Server on the remote hosts. Some VI's I simply run using a "call bu VI reference" but others are started by a "VI class invoke node:: Run VI" and continue running until they are killed. I am trying to do something akin to a "ps -aux" on the remote machines using the VI Server to automatically kill the spawned VI's when the master control program exits (it would send a shutdown signal to the dummy program on each remote host) or when the mater program restarts after a crash, it would send a "reset" signal to the remoste hosts telling them to kill the currently spawned processes and prepare for them to be restarted. (The motivation for this is that I don't want to have to keep track of what VI's are running where.) I have been able to get this to work using a poroperty node to get the VI's in memory, and then check the "exec state" of each of those to kill the running VI's. My problem is that I often need to spawn multiple instances of the same VI (with different data) which gets me into the ralm of the clones. I can't figure out how to find all the clones and kill them. Does anyone have a good idea on how the do this?

--Lee

[Jim Kring]

I did a bit of work on a design pattern, a while back, called "Asynchronous Call By Reference". This allows you to have a handle to your asynchronously running VI, query status, get return data, and even abort it.