Turn-Notifiy-eMail & Hibernation/WOL & WinXP

[Chazar]

This is a technical question: Suppose I turned an ordinary WinXP machine into a Dom2 Server. How can I automatically send an eMail to somewhere whenever a turn is generated?

Dom2 knows the "--postexec" command. Can I use this on WinXP as well? With the graphicless dom2 server? (i.e. "dom2 GameName -S --port 12345 -q -T --postexec notify.bat")

However, WinXP does not know a "mailto" command unlike Linux. Are there command-line mailing tools for windows? Is there one which is capable of SMTP-Authentication as well? (I only have ordinary eMail accounts available for sending email).

(PS: I know, the Gods-Eye tool is very nice and helpful, but in this case it is useless: my server requires Wake-On-Lan and 2 minutes to awake from hibernation, hence sending an eMail after each turn to notify players would be really preferable.)

There is a very easy freeware command-line SMTP e-mailer called bmail (bmail) However, it doesn't do SMTP authentication. There's an alternative (well, there are probably many alternatives, but this is the one I know of...) called Postie (Infradig's Postie) - this does SMTP authentication, but only in the paid-for version of the software. Also (and partly becuase it's so powerful, I admit), it took me ages to work out how to use Postie, and then work out that it wouldn't actually do what I wanted...

My solution, which may seem like a sledge-hammer and nut option, is to run my own SMTP server. Mercury (http://www.pmail.com/overviews/ovw_mercwin.htm) is also freeware, small, pretty easy to setup, reliable, and not resource-intensive (not at a workload of 10 messages a day, anyway!)

I can provide more detail on configurations if you're interested.

Mark

[Chazar]

Thanks for the info! However, I got meanwhile directed to BLAT, which is a commandline emailer for windows whichs nows SMTP-AUTH AND is freeware!

Installation was simple and it works perfectly for me. Now I've got to try this in conjuction with Dom2. I wrote a "notify.bat", which sends emails to all players and added "--postexec notify.bat" to the commandline. Hopefully it will do the trick now (I cant wait for the next turn - as usual ).

Will the graphicless server keep going, despite of the --postexec command, or do I have to restart the server within the .bat file?

How do people interact with the graphicless server anyway? Thus far, I kill it via the process manager everythime when I want to change the options...

Sounds like I should be looking at BLAT.

I imagine the graphicless server will carry on running after the --postexec - the GUI one does - but I've never tried it out for real. I think your method is the only way to "interact" with the graphicless server, which is why I don't use it. The lack of interaction and the lack of feedback just seems to make it too difficult to use, unless you get into the high level of automation (and complexity) like on the mosehansen server.

[Chazar]

The last player moved...and everything turned out as planned! Yippeyah!

I would like to avoid the graphicless server, however then I have the problem that Windows will not hibernate on its own when idle if Dom2 is run as graphicless, then WindowsXP does hibernate as scheduled.

I am grateful for any hints about this auto-hibernation issue and how I can prevent it from thinking that the inactive Dom2-Graphical-server should keep it awake...

BLAT however doesn't seem to do SSL-encrypted authentication, so I'm still with my previous solution.

I'm surprised a client can connect to a host on a hibernating server. You mentioned wake-up-on-LAN, but I'd have expected the client to time-out by then. I don't think I can help with the hibernation thing; minimised Dom2 hosts with no client connections do seem to regularly show small amounts of CPU use. CPU use resets the inactivity timer for Standby and Hibernation, and that's that really.

One kludgy option would be to script or schedule hibernations at regular intervals. But that doesn't sound good even as I type it. Hmm...

[Chazar]

• Well, I do not know what is meant my this w/GSS encyption capability of BLAT, but at least it works with my default freemailer (web.de), which refuses unauthenticated smtp...sorry.
• My PC is set to hibernate after 1 hour to increase the WAF. If a player wants to play, they usually have to send an ordinary WOL-magic packet with a third party tool to wake the PC from hibernation (suspend to ram doesnt work properly on my old desktop), wait 2 minutes for booting and then connect via Dom2 as usual. Since my players mostly connect after work within a similar timeframe, not every player has to wake the PC himself.
  
  Since WOL and waiting for boot is disappointing if no new turn is available, I was desperately looking for a tool to notify a player, so that they can be sure to play...
• Hmm, I tried the -xxx option to reduce CPU usage, but it still prevents Windoze from dozing (hibernating). On the other hand, I am a bit concerned that a connected player does not produce enough load to stop the system from hibernating while he is connected. This is messy... :/