Invoking a Linux process from Windows and receiving stdout.

Question

I have a legacy application in our company built on... ahem; Classic VB (VB 6). It has got a optimizer(CPLEX MIP Solver) component running on a Linux server and is developed in Java.

If we want to provide a Windows UI to invoke the optimizer instance on a remote linux server; how should I implement it?

The optimizer will pump out messages about its progress and it needs to be displayed on the UI.

I thought of two options as of now.

1. Invoke the linux process with PLINK. Not sure whether it can bring STDOUT to windows.
2. Build a small java app and load it as a daemon on the linux server and communicate over TCP.

Would appreciate expert advise. Thank for the helping hand!

Answer 1

The PLINK option is by far rthe easiest to implement (provided you have something analogous to the system() call in the Win32 API)

Answer 2

You can also use SSH to run commands and capture their output, for example, for .NET http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/sharpssh.aspx

You can automate the login process using keys.

Answer 3

If the component is written in Java, why don't you just use it on Windows? If it's not and I misunderstood you, do you have the source code? If yes, just copy it to Windows and recompile. If it really is Linux-specific, Cygwin might be a nice option too. However, it still requires the original source code.