PCOMM Cross-Contamination

Question

We're trying to run multiple IBM Personal Communications sessions on the same (Windows Server 2012) VM under different users, but it seems that PCOMM doesn't confine itself to the current user.

If User1 tries to use Session A, then User2 fires up PCOMM and is given a Session A to use, User2 can use it with no ill effect, but User1's version of Session A will freeze up. Using Handles instead doesn't help because they're just the ASCII versions of the Session Letter (A = 65, B = 66) so we run into the same problem.

The only thing I could think of would be to have User1 start up Sessions A-E, then User2 starts A-J and immediately closes A-E leaving them with F-J... But I feel that that's sloppy and prone to error.

Is there any cleaner way around this? Can the Session Names/Handles be adjusted in some way or PCOMM be made to only look at the current user's sessions? Is this a PCOMM issue or a Windows issue?

Answer 1

It seems when using PCSWS.exe you can specify the short session ID using the /S option:

C:\Pcomm\PCSWS.EXE /S=m C:\AppData\LAN1.WS

(Source: IBM documentation)

So when starting the PCOMM-Session you'd have to check yourself which sessions are already running and then start the new one using the next session ID. To simplify things you could give each user his own session-ID-range, but you would still have to manage which one to use for the next session.