Process Requires Interactive User Mode

We have a process that requires a GUI to open when it runs, there isn’t a non-interactive mode. We would like to control this through an Octopus step or runbook so we can run it during our deployments. Currently it fails because the Tentacle service runs in non-interactive mode. Even when we set the service to be interactive, it doesn’t work. When we log onto the server and run the process, it runs fine. Running this by using a power shell script gives us the same issue (works with a user, doesn’t work with tentacle).

I saw an older post similar to this from 2015. Are there any newer solutions that we can use? Is Octopus just the wrong path to take for this even though this process is part of our deployments?

Hi @dtimberlake.littler,

This is a question that has come up a few times, but there is not too many solutions for what you are trying to do. Interactive mode has been made harder to access in more recent iterations of Windows.

This blog post provides a bit of background on what interactive services was and how it exists today.

It also has a really good solution on how to open interactive prompts using Octopus tentacles. You can achieve this by setting your Octopus Tentacle to run in interactive mode. https://octopus.com/blog/ui-testing-considerations#windows-interactive-agents

Is Octopus just the wrong path to take for this even though this process is part of our deployments?
This is a tough question that I think only you can answer.

I would say that having to run something in non-interactive mode is what you might have to address. if you wish to roll anything out at scale or to remote hosts or require the application to be configured identically on each target - any option that needs to be selected manually is a chance for something to be misconfigured.

Perhaps if you provide more information, we might have a suggestion on how to automate. Otherwise, if it’s a product with a support contact - you can ask if they have any APIs or other solutions for automation planned for the near future.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Dane.

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