IFS file copies failing

One of our customers has a recent problem copying files from an NT Server to
the IFS. This is an unattended PC that has worked flawlessly for the last
year, up until the last two weeks.

The PC dials into their retail stores every night, and downloads the daily
sales information. Then it copies the files to a mapped drive on the AS/400,
which is shared by Netserver. The canned software on the AS/400 requires the
files to be in a folder in QDLS. The PC just sits in it's corner in the
computer room, nobody touches it except to dust off the monitor
occasionally. Up until the past two weeks.

What happens, with no apparent pattern, is that the copy to the shared drive
fails with a 'session canceled' message on occasion. A zero-byte file is
left in the folder, which I can't even delete without canceling QSERVER
subsystem. Perhaps 9 or 10 out of 12 file transfers a night complete fine,
but one or two fail. The command that copies the file is a simple 'copy
c:\dir\file.txt i:\dir\file.txt' in a batch file. I can view the directory,
but any to copy the file from the command line end with a 'error occurred,
session canceled' message.

The AS/400 is a 170 at V4r4. They are not particularly current on PTF's(they
are firm believers in 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'). The AS/400 and the
PC were recently moved to a new location(but not in the time frame of when
the problem started). Nothing was changed on either the PC or the AS/400,
basically they were powered down, moved, and powered back up. Everyone
swears up and down that nothing was touched on the PC.

I'm at a loss as to what could be happening, or how to fix it. Any
suggestions would be appreciated.

Lou Schmaus
CCA, Inc.
lschmaus@link400.com

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