Users being terminated

[Mike Clark]

Progress V 9.1E v2 running under Windows 2003
Chui - Character Client
Connecting under Procontrol
(Users are WinXP)

One of our customers have been having problems with their users being 'kicked out' of Progress quite frequently.

Looking in the db.lg the message is always

Usernum nn terminated abnormally. (794)

There is no pattern to the 'crashes' - it has happens at any time, and the number of users connected make no difference. It has happened when only 1 user was in.

Anybody have any ideas as to what may be causing this, or things I coulddo to try to elliminate it.

Regards
Mike Clark

 

[LarryD]

Have you checked the tcp keepalive parameters on the server and/or any firewall software they may be running? I've seen these seemingly random disconnects of Windows clients happen before and many of the times it's been due to the keepalive settings. (I cannot remember if the error# was the same as yours, though).

You might want to check the Progress Kbase entery ID: P1993 and/or do a search on the kbase for "tcp keepalive".

Larry

 

[Mike Clark]

Thanks Larry,

I will check out the TCP Keepalive on the KB

Mike

 

[TomBascom]

Keepalive is not an application inactivity timeout. It is a timer at the network layer that is used to detect dropped connections. So if keepalive is involved it is only cleaning up a mess that was created by some other root cause.

Are there any messages prior to 794 that are related to this user? Are there any messages in the windows event log from either the time where this disconnect occurs or keepalive seconds prior?

You say that these are ChUI users. Are they connecting remotely? Or are they self-service? If they are remote connections then you should also check the windows logs on the remote box.

Do the users themselves provide any clues? Do they claim to be actively working when this happens? Or is it possible that they are idle and some sort of timeout is kicking in?

 

[Mike Clark]

Hi Tom,

The log just shows the 794 message.

They have had the instance where by they have just logged in and then crashed.

18:09:01 SRV 1: Login usernum 49, userid DD, on B1. (742)
18:09:06 SRV 1: Usernum 49 terminated abnormally. (794)



Forgive me for being dense, but I am not a technical Network person.

The users claim they are actively working, and their machines just crash.
They are connecting on a LAN.

What widows logs should I ask them to look at.

(the event viewer on the server just says 794)

Regards
Mike

 

[joey.jeremiah]

any particular program/s you can point to that are causing this problem ?

i remember having a similar case where an untrappable stop was raised causing the application to exit after a program tried to compile-on-the-fly with a run-time license.

 

[Mike Clark]

Hi Joey,

As far as I know, it can happen at any time and at any place in the system. I have asked each user to make a note of when and where they where when they crashed to see if it is in one particular area more than another.

Mike

 

[joey.jeremiah]

if you can replicate the problem that would be a good start.

 

[TomBascom]

This doesn't sound like a networking problem.

You might want to consider taking a look at -logginglevel and -clientlog to capture additional information to help resolve the problem.

 

[Casper]

We had this issue with Windows 2003 Terminal server and our gui application. Only errors in the db log(794), no errros in the event viewer.
Very hard to trace down these errors.
We used -logginlevel 4 -logentrytypes 2 and -clientlog to get 4GL Trace logging. In our case they all got disconnected in one single procedure. Strange about it was that it was just one case statement which seemed to cause the problem. Rewriting this perfectly legit case statement solved our problem.(Very unsatisfying...)
But I hope you have the same luck and can pinpoint your problem to one procedure/statement.

Mind though 4GL Trace log files can become very large in a very short time.....

BTW:
Keep also track of the protrace files which are generated during the error, they can be helpfull for Progress TS. (same as drwatson files or other windows debug logfiles).

Good luck,

Casper.

 

[Mike Clark]

Hi Tom and Casper,
I will put in the -clientlog to see if I can spot a common 'theme' to their crashing out.

Mike