Cl_archive Hangs

[Mike Kim]

We are using Charlie’s cl_archive routine for cycling the SMAT, log and err files.  Worked fine on Win2k 3.8.1.  We upgraded to a new Win2003 box running 5.3.2 and now it freezes up whenever the Tcl hits an exec command (e.g. exec hcicmdnt -p process -c “. output_cycle”).  The same command works fine run interactively from an hcitcl prompt.  Any ideas?

Thanks, Mike

Topic

[Charlie Bursell]

Does it lock up every time or just periodically?

I have had some weird Tcl problems on Windows 2003 but they are kind of ghosty.

[David Pace]

I am in exactly the same situation WIN2003, 5.3.  I just set up the archive today for testing and it locks up everytime I run it.

[Mike Kim]

Every exec command hangs up. 😥

[Charlie Bursell]

CL_archive is not a Quovadx released product.  It is something I put out there years ago as “freeware” and as-is with the exception of a few sites that paid us to implement archive procedures.    The problem is that several of the utilities I wrote have been passed around so much and modifications made that I hardly recognize them now.

With that said, if one or both of you would e-mail me a copy of your script, I will take a look at it whenever I can.  This is something I have to do on my own time.

I did try it on our Windows 2003 box and did not see the problem.  However, as I said, what I used may not even resemble what you are using.

Charlie

charlie.bursell@quovadx.com

[Charlie Bursell]

One thing I forgot, how are you scheduling the script to run?

[Bryan Dort]

I had a similar problem recently on this platform, although I’m not using the CL_Archive proc.  I upgrade from 3.8.1 to 5.3.3 on Windows 2003 Server.  My proc that cycles output starting hanging.  I tried many things to fix the problem…nothing worked.  Then tried to run the HCICMD -p processname -c “. output_cycle” on a test site and it worked fine.

The difference was the live site had process names with an underscore in the name (i.e HIS_LAB).  So, I brought the site down, renamed the processes to remove the underscore (i.e. HISLAB), removed the old process subdirectories under /exec/processes, rebuilt the databases, and restarted the engine.  Now the output_cycle runs fine and no more hangs.

I can only assume that there is a correlation to the underscore in the process name.

Hope it helps,

Bryan

—

Bryan Dort

Alpena Regional Medical Center

[Charlie Bursell]

There is a Bullentin concerning this subject on another part of this board.  The subject may throw you as it alludes to multi-thread but it concerns Tcl exec calls and Windows 2003.

I am not sure if it is Tcl or W2003 but there seems to be an issue with STDOUT and STDERR.

The work around is to *ALWAYS” redirect the output of any exec call to a file.  If I don’t need the output, I redirect it to NULL (nul:) like:

    exec somecommand > nul:

If I need the output, I redirect to a work file then read that.  Like:

     exec simecommand > .mywork

     set data [read_file -nonewline .mywork]

      file delete .mywork

I put a dot (.) in front just to make it a hidden file.

Hopefully it will be fixed when we go to Tcl 8.4.  That happens with the release of CL 5.4.1 in June.

Charlie

[Dick Bly]

redirect should be done on both stdout and stderr and a catch should be used as in

if [catch { exec abc 2>nul: 1> nul: } err] {

 #error handling code

}

without this kind of code it will intemittently hang. cl 5.3/ windows

[Bryan Dort]

So, it seems that there is no correlation between the “underscore” in the process name and the problem with hcicmd hanging because it is happening again.

Also, Thanks for the bulletin reference, but I’m confused how that relates to this problem.

[Author]

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