Re: Screen freezing and Call Stack unavailable -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi James,

If you have performance tools (PT1 manager feature in LICPGM screen) on yoursystem, you can do a WRKSYSACT next time it happens. Do you see CFINT01using a lot of CPU? Are the other jobs down to priority 68 or similar? Ifso, you have exceeded your system's interactive capacity and need an upgradeto the interactive card. There are ways to get round this problemtemporarily.Otherwise, this can happen when SQL is creating indexes over large files 'onthe fly' and there are ways to fix that too, however you said theapplication in question is using straight RPG which would rule this out.The only other possibility would be a problem with communications (ClientAccess etc) where the screen has lost the connection with the program.

I am assuming you have all the latest PTFs on board including group fixes?

If you would like any help with this, we specialize in fixing performanceproblems etc, so drop me a line offline!


Hope this helps,

Clare

Clare Holtham
Director, Small Blue Ltd - Archiving for BPCS
Web: www.smallblue.co.uk
IBM Certified iSeries Systems Professional
Email: Clare.Holtham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

----- Original Message -----From: "James Viney" <James.Viney@xxxxxxxxxx>

To: <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:15 AM
Subject: Screen freezing and Call Stack unavailable

We are having a problem where some users of our in-house system arefreezing

for several minutes.  The 'X' appears in the bottom left of the screen and

remains there until the screens 'unfreeze' and can affect many users atanytime. The users affected can all be accessing different parts of thesystem

so trying to work out where the source of the problem lies is very
difficult,  They never timeout and to make it even more difficult to trace

the problem, if I try to view the call stack of one of the frozen users,my

screen then freezes for as long as the user's screen is!  Eventually, my

screen will either return with 'Call stack unavailable' or both screenswill

be unfrozen and the call stack is now available.

Because we don't know if the problem is at file level, or which file(s)

is/are causing the problem is difficult to put a trace on anything. Alsoit

can be weeks before the next incident occurs.

The system is written in RPG (v. old style to RPG ILE) and CL.  Synon was
also used extensively.  Fingers are being pointed at programming level
because users of other systems implemented on the same iseries do not have
this problem.

Can anyone advise why the Call Stack would be frozen and any action I can
take to find the problem.

Thanks,

James





James Viney
Senior Analyst/Programmer
Fortis Insurance Limited
Fortis House  Tollgate  Eastleigh  Hants  SO53 3YA
Tel: 02380 313324
Email: james.viney@xxxxxxxxxx
Registered Address: Fortis House  Tollgate  Eastleigh  Hampshire  SO53 3YA
Registered Number: 354568 England
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