Mapped network drive doesn't initialize on boot-up?

Ignition
1

Hi, got an interesting one here perhaps.

Few months ago I mapped a network drive in the ignition.conf file so users would be able to open manuals and schematics from a machine's interface within Ignition, instead of having to navigate to them via the file browser. This has worked up until yesterday afternoon. "Suddenly" it broke, no changes were made.

After some poking and prodding, IT confessed to a scheduled restart of the VM that runs the Ignition-gateway. I went back to the ignition.conf file to check if that may have been restored to a previous version that didn't include the mapping, but it was still there. Upon re-reading the documentation I remembered "reboot" did not initialize the driver mapping, a "stop" and separate "start" would. This worked like a charm and the files are accessable again.

Obviously this is not ideal. I have a few ideas on how to try and work around this, but perhaps someone's ran into the same issue and found a way to resolve it in a less unorthodox way?

Edit:
A little more context - I've used the WebDev module to mount a "Gateway Folder" (something like D:\NetworkDrive\Subfolder), which works because of the mapping via the ignition.conf file (wrapper.share.1. etc..). On the machine interface a list with files for that machine is displayed and uppon opening one of those files the .pdf will open in a new browser-tab.

2

Gateway scripts cannot access to mapped drives - #6 by pturmel discusses some of the problems with network shares which you should be aware of.

3

Thanks! I came across that when trying to find if someone's posted similar findings to mine already, but didn't interpret it as relevant to my case. On second thought though, the drives are probably taking a while to me initialized, and ignition's already looking for them at that point.

I guess I'll have to start looking into that UNC he referenced.

4

"UNC" (universal naming convention?) just means using \\server\sharename\... instead of N:\... throughout your scripts. No mapped drives at all.

Of course Microsoft means "Microsoft-only" when calling something "universal".

4 Likes