[eGroups Migratio...]

Hi all,

I am wondering if anyone of you had this problem. You set up a new integration that reads from a directory( FTP retrieve) , and route it to another server(FTP send). We have about 30 of these integration. It was working happily nothing is wrong. All of a sudden, everything stops!! Nothing in the message log and trace viewer. No errors.

Yes it just stops..the FTP retrieve methods are not working anymore, all FTP process halts. Just the FTP. I restart the FTP transfer adapter and FTP service task, but it doesn't help. Files keeps on piling for hours. What we've done now is we've written scripts to monitor a directory and if files in tha directories are not moved for 10 minutes, alert supporting staff.

All FTP connectors will only work again if I restart XIB, which is something we want to avoid in the production server.

Send it to axway guys...but it's useless, they say our script has problems saying our CD "directory-name" has no "/" at the back. I guess they didn't notice that we told them it was working for days and it halted all of a sudden. If there is something wrong with the script it wouldn't have worked in the first place.Then they come up with a solution...use XFB!!

Anyway, forget about XFB at the moment..has anyone here encounter this problem before? I don't want to explore in new products before knowing this is unsolvable.

Brgds,
Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Do you get a log error in regards to a file .netrc not existing?
Ours is located under C:\users\default

It contains references like:

machine ftp.server1.com login login1 password password1
machine ftp.server2.com login login2 password password2
machine ftp.server3.com login login3 password password3

Our systems administrator deleted it and all our ftp stopped working as a result of this despite every AMTrix setting looking fantastic.

This is amtrix 4.3.1. I am do not know if XIB relies on the same or a similar reference file.

Regards

John Dirkis

[eGroups Migratio...]

Dear Darren,

Nothing ever happens suddenly. We only don't know what circumstances have changed that made something no longer work or no longer behave as before. Maybe your host administrators did something to the XIB host jeopardising your FTP processing?! I am sure you have already explored that route.

Some other questions:

- Do you only have problems with FTP Receive Methods, or also with FTP Send Methods?

- Have you tried to swap dataset, back to the dataset you were using prior to this FTP problem, to see whether the same behaviour is experienced in the previous dataset? If it is, then most likely your XIB host environment has been changed without you knowing it. If not, you may have further leads to find the root cause of your problem by comparing the two datasets in more detail.

I also have a kind advice: please try to not be too negative about an unfortunate experience you had at the address of Axway. Our experience with Axway Support is excellent and what you wrote is far from what we ever experienced. I think you must have been very unlucky to have had an Axway Support person not properly dealing with your case. I would
suggest raising this directly at the address of Axway, if not already done so, to give them the possibility to improve, rather than ventilating this on the AMTrix/XIB e-Group the way you did. As far as I know, the e-Group is available at the grace of Axway, who owns it administers it. Thanks!

Kindest regards,

Herman van Eggelen

[eGroups Migratio...]

Dear Herman,

I apologize if my mail sounds negative to you. I just want to know if anyone here actually faces the same problem.

And I receive one personal email from a XIB user that faces the same problem after posting it in the forum. I am currently comparing datas to find out what’s happening.

We didn’t change any dataset prior. We have been using the same dataset ever since. This only happens when the application went live. The difference is the load.

We have about 20 -30 ftp integration to route the files. This will grow overtime as we’re migrating more countries to use XIB now. The time it happens is random. Initailly we thought it was due to server restart over the weekend, but it’s not. Sometimes it happens during weekdays.Sometimes it happens at 4 a.m when nobody touches the server, so someone meddling with XIB is out of the question. Both FTP receive and FTP send hangs. This lead me to suspect the FTP transfer adapter. But restarting it doesn’t work either. All other services HTTP and emails works fine.

Would like to know if anyone here faces a similar problem and if there are any resolution.

Brgds,

Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Dear Herman,

I apologize if my mail sounds negative to you. I just want to know if anyone here actually faces the same problem.

And I receive one personal email from a XIB user that faces the same problem after posting it in the forum. I am currently comparing datas to find out what’s happening.

We didn’t change any dataset prior. We have been using the same dataset ever since. This only happens when the application went live. The difference is the load.

We have about 20 -30 ftp integration to route the files. This will grow overtime as we’re migrating more countries to use XIB now. The time it happens is random. Initailly we thought it was due to server restart over the weekend, but it’s not. Sometimes it happens during weekdays.Sometimes it happens at 4 a.m when nobody touches the server, so someone meddling with XIB is out of the question. Both FTP receive and FTP send hangs. This lead me to suspect the FTP transfer adapter. But restarting it doesn’t work either. All other services HTTP and emails works fine.

Would like to know if anyone here faces a similar problem and if there are any resolution.

Brgds,

Darren

Hi Darren,

You may want to check the file systems permission. If I'm not
mistaken, the FTP commands in XIB needs to be able to see the root
path. If the root path permission is changed by the system
administrator, the full path may not be visible hence the FTP
command may fail.

Another possible cause is the sharing of PEs. If the PE used by FTP
transfer adapter is shared with some other MBCs and one of the MBC
is hang, then FTP retrieve may not happen.

Just some suggestions. Hope they are relevant.

Tankwongchi

[eGroups Migratio...]

Darren,

One more suggestion, you may want to try a simple FTP to your host
machine. Do a 'pwd' command. If you get an error:

550 The getwd subroutine failed.

That's the permission problem I was referring to.

Tankwongchi

[eGroups Migratio...]

Dear Herman,

I apologize if my mail sounds negative to you. I just want to know if anyone here actually faces the same problem.

And I receive one personal email from a XIB user that faces the same problem after posting it in the forum. I am currently comparing datas to find out what’s happening.

We didn’t change any dataset prior. We have been using the same dataset ever since. This only happens when the application went live. The difference is the load.

We have about 20 -30 ftp integration to route the files. This will grow overtime as we’re migrating more countries to use XIB now. The time it happens is random. Initailly we thought it was due to server restart over the weekend, but it’s not. Sometimes it happens during weekdays.Sometimes it happens at 4 a.m when nobody touches the server, so someone meddling with XIB is out of the question. Both FTP receive and FTP send hangs. This lead me to suspect the FTP transfer adapter. But restarting it doesn’t work either. All other services HTTP and emails works fine.

Would like to know if anyone here faces a similar problem and if there are any resolution.

Brgds,

Darren

Dear Darren,

I can see your frustration but am unfortunately of no use to you. We have not experienced the same and I am empty for suggestions. I therefore sincerely wish you best of luck and hope others can sort you out ASAP.

Kind regards,

Herman

[eGroups Migratio...]

Darren,

First suggestion that springs to mind is to use the hidden support screens on FTP TA task(s) to switch on the debug logging. You'll then get much more detailed logging and might be able to deduce what is going wrong from there.

Speak to Axway support for the key combination to access the screens.

Regards,

John R Hill

[eGroups Migratio...]

Darren,

First suggestion that springs to mind is to use the hidden support screens on FTP TA task(s) to switch on the debug logging. You'll then get much more detailed logging and might be able to deduce what is going wrong from there.

Speak to Axway support for the key combination to access the screens.

Regards,

John R Hill

Hi John,

That’s a good idea..will try it out to see if it logs anything.

Brgds,

Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Hi Darren,

You may want to check the file systems permission. If I'm not
mistaken, the FTP commands in XIB needs to be able to see the root
path. If the root path permission is changed by the system
administrator, the full path may not be visible hence the FTP
command may fail.

Another possible cause is the sharing of PEs. If the PE used by FTP
transfer adapter is shared with some other MBCs and one of the MBC
is hang, then FTP retrieve may not happen.

Just some suggestions. Hope they are relevant.

Tankwongchi

Hi Tan,

We have dedicated PEs for FTP , Email and HTTP.
Permission problem…..hmm, if there are permission problem shouldn’t we get an error in the message log or something?
Appreciate your suggestion though. Will try it out too.

Brgds,

Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Darren,

First suggestion that springs to mind is to use the hidden support screens on FTP TA task(s) to switch on the debug logging. You'll then get much more detailed logging and might be able to deduce what is going wrong from there.

Speak to Axway support for the key combination to access the screens.

Regards,

John R Hill

HI John,

I’ve been thinking we’re tranffering about 50,000 files per day using FTP , will turning on this log fills up the disk space very fast? Since we don’t know when it will happens again…we are not sure what’s the impact on the performance and Disk usage. It’s a live server so there are some risk that I need to evaluate before informing support staff to go ahead.

Have you try this before? Is there any performance impact? I can try it in my test server but the load will not be the same as a live server.

Will try it out..thanks for the suggestion.

Brgds,

Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Hi all,

We’re running XIB2.01, FTP connector 1.3.1 and also Service pack 1 for FTP 01-03.

Brgds,

Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Darren,

We had a very similar problem to what you are describing. All of the transactions on XIB simply stop at random intervals. No error messages in the trace log, no messages failing in the message log. Axway support was of no use in resolving this problem.

What appears to have been the problem is a custom Trigger MBC program that performed ODBC calls. This Trigger program was causing wait conflicts within the Oracle database which appears to halt the XIB transaction processing. To fix this problem, I'm using an external process to access the Oracle database and have it FTP data to XIB.

We are currently on XIB 2.1.1

Regards,

Erik

[eGroups Migratio...]

All,

In my response below, I may sound negative towards Axway Support, which is not the case. Axway Support has been very responsive and effective for most issues that we have had. This particular issue that we had was nearly impossible for Axway Support to resolve since we could not provide Trace Log entries or Message failures.

Regards,

Erik

Darren,

We had a very similar problem to what you are describing. All of the transactions on XIB simply stop at random intervals. No error messages in the trace log, no messages failing in the message log. Axway support was of no use in resolving this problem.

What appears to have been the problem is a custom Trigger MBC program that performed ODBC calls. This Trigger program was causing wait conflicts within the Oracle database which appears to halt the XIB transaction processing. To fix this problem, I'm using an external process to access the Oracle database and have it FTP data to XIB.

We are currently on XIB 2.1.1

Regards,

Erik

[eGroups Migratio...]

Perhaps a better way would be to create and use a database trigger to send data to XIB via the Message Feed API or FTP connector.

Michael

[eGroups Migratio...]

Darren,

We had a very similar problem to what you are describing. All of the transactions on XIB simply stop at random intervals. No error messages in the trace log, no messages failing in the message log. Axway support was of no use in resolving this problem.

What appears to have been the problem is a custom Trigger MBC program that performed ODBC calls. This Trigger program was causing wait conflicts within the Oracle database which appears to halt the XIB transaction processing. To fix this problem, I'm using an external process to access the Oracle database and have it FTP data to XIB.

We are currently on XIB 2.1.1

Regards,

Erik

Hi Erik,

Thanks..but we don’t have any trigger MBC. Bbut when it happens only the FTP halted, other process is still working ex. HTTP messages.

Initially I wanted to turn on the Debug log for the adapters, but it’s generating too many trace logs. As we have about 30 -40 FTP integrations.

Thanks again.

Brgds,

Darren

[eGroups Migratio...]

Hi Erik,

Thanks..but we don’t have any trigger MBC. Bbut when it happens only the FTP halted, other process is still working ex. HTTP messages.

Initially I wanted to turn on the Debug log for the adapters, but it’s generating too many trace logs. As we have about 30 -40 FTP integrations.

Thanks again.

Brgds,

Darren

Hi,

Even though this is an old discussion, has there been found any solution for this? Our customer is currently having this very same issue. XIB just stops transmitting files without any error seen anywhere. We have quite many ftp methods and also ODBC connection used.

Regards
Tero

[eGroups Migratio...]

Hi,

Even though this is an old discussion, has there been found any solution for this? Our customer is currently having this very same issue. XIB just stops transmitting files without any error seen anywhere. We have quite many ftp methods and also ODBC connection used.

Regards
Tero

Hi

1) Increase "Max connections to external FTP Servers" in configuration tab of "FTP Service task" and check.

2) PATCH_IFTP_135-01-12 is not installed in your XIB may solve your problem.

We faced the same problem earlier and the above options solved our problem. It may not true in your case, but just make an attempt if you want.

Regards,

Kishore

[eGroups Migratio...]

Hi

1) Increase "Max connections to external FTP Servers" in configuration tab of "FTP Service task" and check.

2) PATCH_IFTP_135-01-12 is not installed in your XIB may solve your problem.

We faced the same problem earlier and the above options solved our problem. It may not true in your case, but just make an attempt if you want.

Regards,

Kishore

Hi,

Thanks very much! We will try these.

Br Tero

[Rhenus ICT Servi...]

Hi Darren,

A few years ago we had exactly the same problem, which was solved by installing a certain ftp patch (i'm sorry, but
I can't remember which patch it was). At that time we were also running XIB 2.0.1 just as you do. I strongly suggest upgrading to XIB 2.1.1 if possible.

About FTP connections in XIB we use the following method:

- For EVERY server we connect to (external & internal) we define a SEPARATE "FTP Service Task" with a corresponding "FTP Transfer Adapter"; at the moment we have about 40 of them. This will make XIB much more robust, because it wil now process things in parallel.
- We have 1 dedicated Proc.Engine for all the "FTP Transfer Adapters"; it should be possible to define 1 Proc.Engine for every Transfer Adapter,
- There's still 1 "FTP Classifier Task".
- IMPORTANT: when defining lots of Transfer Adapters you have to raise the nr of Service Ports in the Task Manager -> System -> <XIB SYSTEM NAME> -> System Machine Task -> Porter. Since we run XIB on Linux we also had to add some lines to the file /etc/services.

Why did we decide to do the above?

A few years ago we discovered/tested that when XIB was connecting to several FTP servers (using only 1 FTP Service Task & Transfer Adapter) and 1 of the servers went down suddenly (in this case a ftpserver on the PC of my colleague; he pulled out his networkcable in the middle of a transfer) XIB stopped processing files alltogether. I do not know if this still happens with newer XIB installations, but configuring XIB as explained above solved this behaviour.

Greetings,
Rob