Re: Freeing session names?

Here's what I think is happening:

    1) You connect the first time, everything is okay.

    2) When the user is done, he turns off his terminal without hitting
          Ctrl-Q or SIGNOFF ENDCNN(*YES), etc.   That is, the TN5250
          session is still connected to the AS/400 when the power kills.

    3) Now, while the power is off, the AS/400 thinks the terminal is
          still on.  (TCP/IP is a packet-based protocol.   If there is
          no activity, no packets are sent.   Likewise, if you turn it
          off, no packets are sent.  It's difficult to distinguish the
          two)

    4) When you turn the terminal back on, and it tries to re-connect,
          the AS/400 thinks the terminal is still in use, and you're
          trying to give it a duplicate name.   Therefore, it doesn't
          allow this (and TN5250 disconnects)

The easiest solution is to hit Ctrl-Q in TN5250 before shutting off
the PC.  This will cause TN5250 to close down the session normally.

Another potentially simple solution is to get the users to use the
ENDCNN(*YES) argument to the SIGNOFF command.   This will cause the
AS/400 to terminate the session when they sign off.   You could do a
CHGCMDDFT to make this the default action.

Yet another possible solution is to change the "session keep alive
timeout" for your AS/400's telnet server.   The AS/400 periodically
sends a "keep alive" message to the TN5250 client, and it it does not
see a response will disconnect you.   If you set the frequency of
this message to a lower value (i.e., it happens more often) the AS/400
may detect that the terminal has been shut off and disconnect you
earlier.   For more information, see the TCPKEEPALV parameter of
the CHGTCPA command, and the TIMMRKTIMO parameter of the CHGTELNA
command on your AS/400.

Good luck


On Fri, 5 Apr 2002, Max Laier wrote:

> I have the following problem:
> I use tn5250 and lp5250d on a read-only linux, so the users can switch off
> the power as they are used to from the older IBM terminals. But when the
> power comes back my AS/400 disconnects the terminal/printer-session unless I
> change the sessions name.
> How can I manage to get the sessionname free again (w/o any special signal to
> the program)? Is there a way to force a name? What is the difference between
> env.NAME and env.DEVNAME (I use the later)?
>