Re: FoxWeb Broker Timed Out ???

Most probably there's code in one or more scripts that is causing channels to hang. While you are troubleshooting this problem I recommend that you disable the Run as Service and Hide Channels options in the FoxWeb Control Center. You will need to restart FoxWeb for your changes to take effect. Once you restart you should be able to see the FoxWeb icon in the tray area of the task bar, as well as separate icons for each channel in the task bar.

You can open the channel status window by right-clicking on the tray icon and selecting Channel Status. You should also be able to click on the channel icons to view the VFP windows for each channel.

Once you experience the problem again, please check the status of the channels and inspect the various windows to see if there any hints that would help you identify the problem. Look for open dialog windows or anything else that would halt execution of a script.

By the way, the Channels Status tab in the Control Center was replaced with the status window, as well as show_channels.fwx. Both these options are described in the Operating the FoxWeb Server page of the FoxWeb documentation.

FoxWeb Support Team
support@foxweb.com email

Sent by David Hempy on 06/01/2004 09:25:07 PM:

I got an email from a user in the wee hours this morning (~2AM, 6/01/2004) complaining that our FoxWeb pages were all unavailable. I verified the error, as shown:

FoxWeb Message

The FoxWeb Service has returned the following message:
FoxWeb Broker Timed Out

I restarted the FoxWeb service, and all was well. I couldn't find any evidence in the error log, fwstart, etc...so I shrugged it off as a fluke.

Well, I got another email from the same user at 19:41, Tuesday, 6/01. I poked around a bit more before restarting the service this time, at 21:52. The FWStart.log file since 5/25 looks like this :

05/25/2004 01:07:07 Starting FoxWeb
05/25/2004 14:19:53 Killed Channel 1: /GrdReport@/db/sta/sta
05/25/2004 14:19:58 Restarting Channel 1
05/26/2004 19:08:58 Starting FoxWeb
05/27/2004 10:27:28 Killed Channel 3: /GrdReport@/db/sta/sta
05/27/2004 10:27:29 Restarting Channel 3
05/28/2004 14:25:35 Closing FoxWeb
05/28/2004 14:25:43 Starting FoxWeb
05/28/2004 14:28:43 Killed Channel 1: / at@/db/pub/ket
05/28/2004 14:28:44 Restarting Channel 1
06/01/2004 02:07:25 Closing FoxWeb
06/01/2004 02:07:27 Starting FoxWeb
06/01/2004 10:42:16 Killed Channel 1: /GrdReport@/db/sta/sta
06/01/2004 10:42:17 Restarting Channel 1
06/01/2004 10:53:44 Killed Channel 2: / Bulletin@/db/pub/pub
06/01/2004 10:53:49 Restarting Channel 2
06/01/2004 21:52:07 Closing FoxWeb
06/01/2004 21:52:24 Starting FoxWeb
06/01/2004 21:52:54 Restarting Channel 2
06/01/2004 21:52:55 Restarting Channel 3
06/01/2004 21:53:24 Restarting Channel 2

I tried to run chanstat prior to the restart, but it returned the same error as all the other FoxWeb page. (BTW - I miss v1.29's channel tab on the control panel...very handy when you can't get a web page from the server, for whatever reason. Does such a program exist in v2.x? I would *really* like to have that ability again.)

So now I'm looking at the error log in the FW control panel. I don't see any entries anywhere near the time of the lock-ups.

I did see a few of these errors, but with hours of successful web site use after the error and the lock-up. I don't see much correlation between these errors and the lock-ups.


There was an error during the interpretation of your request.
Error #:		1
Message:		File 'd:\db\pub\yearbook.dbc' does not exist.
Program:		procedure aboutme d:\db\yearbook\yearbook.fxp
Line #:		719
Line:		select top 10 questions.question, statements.* from yearbook!questions join yearbook!statements on questions.questionid == statements.questionid where questions.category = 'YB' and statements.approved == .T. and userid = m.userid into cursor yb order by stmtid

Sure enough, I was not opening the yearbook database. (wonder how long that's been broken! *blush*). By banging on this page, I could manage to get the channels to hang up with this error:

FoxWeb Message

The FoxWeb Service has returned the following message:

No Channels Active

However, this condition consistently heals itself within a few seconds...unlike the "Broker Timed Out" error which required a restart.

I have fixed the error in my program (file does not exist) and published to our live server, and am hoping for the best. However, I'm not convinced that this error is related to the lock-ups.

Any suggestions? Are there other places I should be looking for evidence? Are there tools I can use to figure out what's going on? What does "FoxWeb Broker Timed Out" mean, compared to "No Channels Active?"

Hopefully, the problem will just "go away" with the change I described above. If it appears again, I will set up a cron job to restart the FoxWeb service once or twice a day. I very much want to avoid that. I hope you have some insight to offer me.

-dave

ps. We're running FoxWeb v2.6, VFP v6.0, Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195], and Netscape-Enterprise/6.0, with 4 FW channels.

--
David Hempy
Internet Database Administrator
Kentucky Educational Television
(859)258-7164 - (800)333-9764