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mbeckham's avatar
mbeckham
Occasional Contributor
4 years ago

Test automation on Virtual Machines

Hi, I'm looking for any alternative methods to perform our nightly automation testing. Our current train looks like this: 1. Tests developed on my local PC are pushed to an Azure Repository. 2. I...
  • mbeckham's avatar
    mbeckham
    4 years ago

    Hi Everyone,

    Alex, you've stolen my thunder 🙂   I was just about to report our success with tscon.  We ran the command manually on the RDP machine which 'shut' it down while the Agent was 'listening' for work.  Our next step will be to create the batch file to run the tscon command and include it in the nightly pipeline.

    So, to run this command (as Alex says, run as an administrator )  within the RDP window, from the Command Line. 

    >query user          (this will return the sessionname eg rdp-tcp#xx)

    >tscon.exe  rdp-tcp#xx  /dest:console

    respond "yes" to to close your session

    ...all done

     

mbeckham's avatar
mbeckham
Occasional Contributor
4 years ago

Thanks for your reply Marsha,

We've tried several options, and can successfully run our Devops pipeline on the remote VM providing a RDP session initiated from a machine that has its Power and Screen saver options turned off.

 

We will try the method using  tscon documented in  Disconnecting From Remote Desktop While Running Automated Tests.  If we have success running the tscon command manually, we'll then try inserting it into the pipeline.

 

Thanks

Mark

  • AlexKaras's avatar
    AlexKaras
    Champion Level 3
    4 years ago

    Hi,

     

    > If we have success running the tscon command manually

    Just a note that tscon must be executed with elevated admin credentials.

     

    • mbeckham's avatar
      mbeckham
      Occasional Contributor
      4 years ago

      Hi Everyone,

      Alex, you've stolen my thunder 🙂   I was just about to report our success with tscon.  We ran the command manually on the RDP machine which 'shut' it down while the Agent was 'listening' for work.  Our next step will be to create the batch file to run the tscon command and include it in the nightly pipeline.

      So, to run this command (as Alex says, run as an administrator )  within the RDP window, from the Command Line. 

      >query user          (this will return the sessionname eg rdp-tcp#xx)

      >tscon.exe  rdp-tcp#xx  /dest:console

      respond "yes" to to close your session

      ...all done

       

      • AlexKaras's avatar
        AlexKaras
        Champion Level 3
        4 years ago

        Hi,

         

        > Alex, you've stolen my thunder 

        Yes, I am that kind of a guy 😉

         

        I did not verified it from Jenkins but I believe that it should work (and it worked for me in different scenarios) - you may consider to execute this batch file using PowerShell with the '-verb RunAs' to elevate file's privileges (https://ss64.com/ps/syntax-elevate.html)