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Intermittent Lockups

I have posted this question before but not to this particular group. We have about 10 Macs and 40 Windows 95 PCs running Clients and Profits Pro 3.04 and attaching to a C&P .df1 file on a Novell 4.11 server. We keep getting intermittent lockups, where suddenly all the users get the padlock symbol and nobody can continue working nor login. The only way we have been able to solve this problem is looking from the Novell side at all users currently using the .df1 file and forcing them all to quit or reboot. Then the system may run OK for anywhere between one day and three weeks without a problem. Have any of you seen this before and know a solution. Please let me know. Thanks.

Jeff Teal WW Grainger

We also experience intermittent lockups for no apparent or obvious reason. The only answer has been to do the same thing you are doing, which is to log everybody off, restart C&P on the server and have everybody restart the C&P clients.

Scot Robnett K.W. Powell & Associates

Sounds very similiar to own environment (ie. Macs, PCs, Novell 4.11, Windows 95/98 etc.). We have been running C&P for 16 months and have never experienced the problem you describe. We have approx. 50 users for C&P.

I would troubleshoot possible "file sharing" and "rights" issues on the Novell server depending upon how you have set things up.

We are setup as follows:

On our Novell server, we created a separately mapped network volume to hold the C&P database. Our Mac users and PC users all have the appropriate netware rights to access that volume, Novell manages the file sharing so that we maintain the database integrity. (our Mac users are running a Novell client for their access to the network).

Hope this helps.

JOHN AREVALO Hughes, Ruch & Murphy, Inc.

We have had the same problem intermittently. We are running on the database on a Ntserver. We haven't resolved the problem yet but have discovered a pattern. It seems that we have one users in particular that tend to cause the lock up once we kick her out the system everyone is okay. Originally we tried giving her a new name and password but that didn't seem to work so we ran repairs on the access/user file and the staff file. We also reinstalled C&P on her machine thinking that she may have a corrupt copy of the software. We have had other people lose time in C&P and reinstalling their copy of C&P seemed to help. We still don't quite understand why the software gets corrupt on certain machines but for now that 's the best we have been able to do.

Thanks!

elaine ucciferri accounting manager H A R P E L L

We were having similar problems but with an NT server. We found the solution to our problem in the C&P Database Guide. After reconfiguring a few settings a year ago we have been free of the massive lockout problem. If you haven't tried this, I urge you to get a copy of the guide, it is included in your C&P manual and you can also access it on the C&P website.

Also, make sure that all of your users know not to shut off their computers while C&P is running. On the Mac, press the keys Command and (.) and on the PC press the keys Control and Break. This allows the user to get out of the padlock and go on to something else while waiting for their area of C&P to be free. We found that improper rebooting was what triggered most of our lockout occurrences. Good luck!

Lane Brafford, Marketing Support Specialist Marketing Services Organization North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center

We are strictly Mac users only; however, we can only have 5 users log on at one time. That is the allowance of my particular agreement with C&P. Also, if more than one person is listing at the same time, I have noticed it will lock up then or if someone has walked away from his or her machine without saving the current item they were working on, that will lock us up as well. Hope this helps.

Felica Sparks Office Manager Benton Newton & Partners Advertising

We have the same problem. I was told to ensure that the web share enabler had PPC not 68K following it. We did have 68K following but when it was reinstalled and changed to the PPC on the Macs, it still did not fix the problem with sharing files or locking up.

We have a Linux server. I didn't read that anyone else had a Linux. I'm going to try these suggestions to see if it works. If anyone else has anything to offer, please post it.

Thanks.

Allison Benton

Linux Server

FYI- We are also using a Linux file server. It's running the Appletalk-IP enabled Netatalk. We've had pretty good luck with it over the past several months, although we get index corruption occationally. I don't *think* it's because of the server, although it's hard to tell. IMHO, file-based database systems are just plain prone to corruption from bad network connections or a fritzy client machine. We haven't had any data corruption, thankfully, just 'indexing'.

Tech info on our setup: RH 6.2 base system with Netatalk 1.5pre6 configured with "--enable-redhat --with-shadow --with-flock-locks --enable-lastdid". We are strickly Mac-only for the client side of Clients and Profits (i.e., not multi-platform).

Philip Edelbrock