[archive] windows 2000 and XP clients

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

Technically, if opportunistic locking is turned off on the server then op locks on files will not be granted to the clients. So, turning it off server side should work fine. Here are some articles on the subject:

Windows NT:
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q129202
Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q296264

It's also my understanding that beginning with runtime version 5.2.1 opportunistic locking was no longer an issue due to a change in vision lock handling by the runtime.

===================================
File Access to Windows Shared Files
===================================

On Windows systems, the speed of file access to Vision files located on a Windows shared drive can be variable. The cause of this variability is attributed to an imperfect interaction between the way the Windows operating system handles file locks and the way it caches shared files on the local system. In Version 4.3.1, to improve performance, the method used to access Vision files on Windows shared drives was changed. Subsequently, although most users have experienced good performance and no problems, some users have experienced sporadic file corruption problems (error 98, 90). To minimize the possibility of these errors, in Version 5.2.1 the runtime has reverted to the pre-4.3.1 method of opening files. Although this method can result in somewhat slower performance, it is safer. The faster method can still be used and is configurable via a Windows registry entry.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

Technically, if opportunistic locking is turned off on the server then op locks on files will not be granted to the clients. So, turning it off server side should work fine. Here are some articles on the subject:

Windows NT:
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q129202
Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q296264

It's also my understanding that beginning with runtime version 5.2.1 opportunistic locking was no longer an issue due to a change in vision lock handling by the runtime.

===================================
File Access to Windows Shared Files
===================================

On Windows systems, the speed of file access to Vision files located on a Windows shared drive can be variable. The cause of this variability is attributed to an imperfect interaction between the way the Windows operating system handles file locks and the way it caches shared files on the local system. In Version 4.3.1, to improve performance, the method used to access Vision files on Windows shared drives was changed. Subsequently, although most users have experienced good performance and no problems, some users have experienced sporadic file corruption problems (error 98, 90). To minimize the possibility of these errors, in Version 5.2.1 the runtime has reverted to the pre-4.3.1 method of opening files. Although this method can result in somewhat slower performance, it is safer. The faster method can still be used and is configurable via a Windows registry entry.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

Technically, if opportunistic locking is turned off on the server then op locks on files will not be granted to the clients. So, turning it off server side should work fine. Here are some articles on the subject:

Windows NT:
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q129202
Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q296264

It's also my understanding that beginning with runtime version 5.2.1 opportunistic locking was no longer an issue due to a change in vision lock handling by the runtime.

===================================
File Access to Windows Shared Files
===================================

On Windows systems, the speed of file access to Vision files located on a Windows shared drive can be variable. The cause of this variability is attributed to an imperfect interaction between the way the Windows operating system handles file locks and the way it caches shared files on the local system. In Version 4.3.1, to improve performance, the method used to access Vision files on Windows shared drives was changed. Subsequently, although most users have experienced good performance and no problems, some users have experienced sporadic file corruption problems (error 98, 90). To minimize the possibility of these errors, in Version 5.2.1 the runtime has reverted to the pre-4.3.1 method of opening files. Although this method can result in somewhat slower performance, it is safer. The faster method can still be used and is configurable via a Windows registry entry.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

We have had all sorts of problems with locking using Samba with Acucobol. At one point, we had things working great with the following in the smb.conf:

oplocks = false
locking = yes
blocking locks = false

This worked fine on a network where there were Win95, Win98, WinNT, and Unix runtimes all accessing the same Vision 3 files.

However, as soon as the end user introduced Win2000 systems into the mix, they started having all kinds of problems with Windows clients hanging - all versions of Windows. The hang would occur on various I/O statements - opens, reads, and writes.

It was unpredictable, but reproducable to an extent. I wrote a test program that beat on a file and ran it on Unix and in several instances of Windows runtimes (on Windows 2000) and eventually it would hang on Windows (Unix was always OK).

We ended up moving the end user off of the Unix server and onto a Windows server (they were using the graphical runtime anyway). That stopped the hangs. Not a solution, but made the customer happy.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

We have had all sorts of problems with locking using Samba with Acucobol. At one point, we had things working great with the following in the smb.conf:

oplocks = false
locking = yes
blocking locks = false

This worked fine on a network where there were Win95, Win98, WinNT, and Unix runtimes all accessing the same Vision 3 files.

However, as soon as the end user introduced Win2000 systems into the mix, they started having all kinds of problems with Windows clients hanging - all versions of Windows. The hang would occur on various I/O statements - opens, reads, and writes.

It was unpredictable, but reproducable to an extent. I wrote a test program that beat on a file and ran it on Unix and in several instances of Windows runtimes (on Windows 2000) and eventually it would hang on Windows (Unix was always OK).

We ended up moving the end user off of the Unix server and onto a Windows server (they were using the graphical runtime anyway). That stopped the hangs. Not a solution, but made the customer happy.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

We have had all sorts of problems with locking using Samba with Acucobol. At one point, we had things working great with the following in the smb.conf:

oplocks = false
locking = yes
blocking locks = false

This worked fine on a network where there were Win95, Win98, WinNT, and Unix runtimes all accessing the same Vision 3 files.

However, as soon as the end user introduced Win2000 systems into the mix, they started having all kinds of problems with Windows clients hanging - all versions of Windows. The hang would occur on various I/O statements - opens, reads, and writes.

It was unpredictable, but reproducable to an extent. I wrote a test program that beat on a file and ran it on Unix and in several instances of Windows runtimes (on Windows 2000) and eventually it would hang on Windows (Unix was always OK).

We ended up moving the end user off of the Unix server and onto a Windows server (they were using the graphical runtime anyway). That stopped the hangs. Not a solution, but made the customer happy.

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 09 June 2003]

anyone have a comment on whether "Opportunistic locking" should allows be off when running Acucobol Apps over a network.

We have had a few sites on all versions 4.3.1 - 5.2.1 of the runtime that have weird file locking problems and error 99's, normally we've been just putting them on terminal services and the problem goes away, but then I started to remember configuring SAMBA back in the day and having to set locking a certian way to make everything run just right. and I seem to remember a tech article a couple of years ago that said to improve performance and stop some file locking issues to turn "Opportunistic locking" off in windows.

My next question would be does it need to be done on the server and the XP clients or just the server.

speaking of a test program, I've been looking to see if anyone else has written a better more "real life" version of the acubench.cob

we made a few modifications making it run multiple occurances of the runtimes to simulate multiple clients accessing the same files but if someone has one better please upload.