Acuthin timeout on PC's running Windows XP.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 14 February 2012]

Hi
I have been asked if any one has had an issue with acuthin disconnecting for no apparent reason on windows XP SP3.
Senario is

User logged in via Acuthin client/Acuconnect (8.1.0) to a IBM system running AIX 6.1.
Users works fine for any number of hours, leaves Acuthin logged in and goes to lunch, comes back and clicks the mouse to start work again on the Acuthin screen and the process just disappears.

Have got TC_CHECK_ALIVE_INTERVAL set to 32767 and TC_SERVER_TIMEOUT at 300.

Have to kill of the process on the IBM system.

I have this problem with about 3 customers sites but have hundreds more who don't have this issue and not all the users at these sites have the problem.

I have exhausted all other avenues that i can think of on the PC's themselves.
Any suggestions would be gatefully appreciated.

Mark Chambers
Technical Consultant.

If you have one or more users who consistently get this, you might try tracing messages for acuthin. You can do this by adding "-t n" to the acuthin command line, for example:

acuthin -t 3 server:port alias

The value n is a bit field with the following valid values:

0x01    basic TC_* message tracking
0x02    event details from the client
0x04    w_canvas handles
0x08    CONTROL_SET_PROP details
0x10    configuration details
0x20    signal details
0x40    w_control handles

So a value of 5 will show canvas handles and TC_ message tracking. A value of 127 (0x7F) will show everything (and the trace files may get large).

Also (strangely) a value > 3 will also start up a socket trace. My feeling is that should have been a separate bit. Oh well...

If there is some common theme when the user gets disconnected, you may be able to detect it with the trace files. At that point, further investigation may be needed, or you may be able to fix the problem yourself.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 14 February 2012]

Hi
I have been asked if any one has had an issue with acuthin disconnecting for no apparent reason on windows XP SP3.
Senario is

User logged in via Acuthin client/Acuconnect (8.1.0) to a IBM system running AIX 6.1.
Users works fine for any number of hours, leaves Acuthin logged in and goes to lunch, comes back and clicks the mouse to start work again on the Acuthin screen and the process just disappears.

Have got TC_CHECK_ALIVE_INTERVAL set to 32767 and TC_SERVER_TIMEOUT at 300.

Have to kill of the process on the IBM system.

I have this problem with about 3 customers sites but have hundreds more who don't have this issue and not all the users at these sites have the problem.

I have exhausted all other avenues that i can think of on the PC's themselves.
Any suggestions would be gatefully appreciated.

Mark Chambers
Technical Consultant.

Prior to version 8.1.1 when the Thin Client connection was interrupted on the client side AcuThin would simply disappear without any messages. In version 8.1.1 ECN-3911 added a message when there is a connection problem “Communication socked closed unexpectedly”. This still doesn’t reveal the cause but there is now an alert that there was a connection problem. I suspect that if your users were running 8.1.1 they would be seeing this message.

Your affected users are likely having some kind of network issue interrupting the client connection. Tracking down that issue is difficult, however there are some steps that can be taken to address the issue.

1. Set network cards to static speed.

2. Troubleshoot network hardware: cables, network cards, switches, routers.

3. Update the network card drivers.

4. Some networks have a timeout imposed on inactive connections, probably in the firewall configuration. Setting TC_CHECK_ALIVE_INTERVAL to something less than the network’s timeout value should resolve that. For example one of our users noted that the application would always disappear from the client PC after 2 minutes of user inactivity. Setting TC_CHECK_ALIVE_INTERVAL to 60 resolved the issue in that case. What happens is that AcuThin then sends a ping every minute and the connection is never seen as inactive.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 14 February 2012]

Hi
I have been asked if any one has had an issue with acuthin disconnecting for no apparent reason on windows XP SP3.
Senario is

User logged in via Acuthin client/Acuconnect (8.1.0) to a IBM system running AIX 6.1.
Users works fine for any number of hours, leaves Acuthin logged in and goes to lunch, comes back and clicks the mouse to start work again on the Acuthin screen and the process just disappears.

Have got TC_CHECK_ALIVE_INTERVAL set to 32767 and TC_SERVER_TIMEOUT at 300.

Have to kill of the process on the IBM system.

I have this problem with about 3 customers sites but have hundreds more who don't have this issue and not all the users at these sites have the problem.

I have exhausted all other avenues that i can think of on the PC's themselves.
Any suggestions would be gatefully appreciated.

Mark Chambers
Technical Consultant.

Hi Guys

Thanks for the information.
I reduced the TC_CHECK_ALIVE_INTERVAL down to 600 and this seems to have done the trick, if fits in with the 15 minute timeout for the network on a PC.

No more Timeout problems, once again Thanks.

Mark.