4GL "Prompt" and zombies

To: jlumbley@netcom.com who wrote: JL> To all the 4GL gurus out here: I thought I'd answer anyway! :) JL> We have a 4GL (4GL version 4.11 and 5.01.UD4 on HP9000's) application that > is being accessed over telnet from a PC over the network. Occasionally > (we think the #*@# users are rebooting the PC), the 4GL program > becomes a zombie (top shows a ? as it's owning terminal) and the 4GL program > sucks up 95-100% of the CPU time. All the code is doing is waiting for the > user to enter data via a prompt command. JL> Does anyone have any experience with this? Funnily enough, yes. And guess what platform I'm running on? We're not telnet'ing in , we go in via a terminal server or X.25 or Novell, but we have exactly the same problem ... gifted users! The only thing I can suggest is a shell script that cron fires up every 15 minutes or so. The thing to beware of is nohup'ing a job in the background, logging off and never getting results. Funnily enough, we have another HP site with some equally interesting users, but we don't seem to have the same problem there. What version of HPUX are you running on? I know the site that doesn't seem to have the problem is running the very latest version available here in the boonies. I live in mortal terror of upgrading my first site, due to the proficiency with which these things are undertaken locally, so I don't know if that will solve the problem. The best thing I can suggest for the shell script is something like: ps -ef | grep fglgo | grep " ? " > /tmp/runaways for i in `cat /tmp/runaways` do # ps each process in turn, sleep 5, see if it's gained more than 3 seconds# and if so kill it. maybe check that there's not a nohup somewhere in the # the parent chain. # notice how I leave the difficult stuff to you, but it is Saturday! done Hope this helps. billy.wheeler@digitec.co.za --- . SPEED 1.40 [NR] . . <-- Grain of Salt. Take as needed with above advice ---- Digitec Online - 20 Nodes * Johannesburg, South Africa +27-11-476-2008 * Best BBS * Best Sysop * @digitec.co.za * RsaNET User Choice Awards 1993 *