Aloha fileserver problem

[juancruzhurtado]

Hello everyone!
I work for a restaurant that has a Server and two terminals.
Yesterday, the server was infected with a virus, so we had to disconnect it from the network and make Term2 the file server.
Now the server is back, but I cannot make it the file server again.
Both terminals still think Term2 is the file server.

HELP!!!

Thank you very much in advance!

Juan

 

[SwampGas]

Your TCP functionality is probably broken. Use a TCP Winsock repair utility or Combofix and see if that easily repairs the networking problem.

How is it possible for POS systems to become infected?

MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[juancruzhurtado]

The virus is gone the TCP is working fine now.
I just need how to set my server as the Master terminal again.

Thanks for any responses

 

[juancruzhurtado]

Please excuse my ignorance, but are the "Filer Server" and the "Master Terminal" the same thing?
Or the Master Terminal has to be actually one of the terminals?

Thanks again!!

 

[joenoreason]

The file server is generally the back of house, where you run the reports from. It is where all of the daily data is saved.

The master terminal is different. It will act and look like a regular terminal, but will say master terminal (on my version at least) on the login screen. I'm assuming it's called the master terminal because every other terminal communicates with the master terminal and the master terminal communicates with the file server therefor if the master goes down, the system goes down.

Did you try using the "File Server Recovery" option from the file server?

Note: I don't do this for a living, I do it for fun

 

[juancruzhurtado]

What confuses me is that on the bottom of the screen, both terminals say "MASTER(Server:TERM1)"
I thought that meant that TERM1 is acting as the file server, but maybe I am wrong.
I did run the Fileserver recovery already.

So, is there a way to check what fileserver the terminals are using?

Thanks again, everybody

Juan

 

[SwampGas]

For redundancy purposes, you should always have a register terminal that is the master. The master terminal keeps all the orders, order numbers, etc synchronized between all other terminals. The master terminal is also the only terminal that talks to the backoffice computer. He's kind of the boss in the field. When the master fails, another terminal can become master and take over with no loss in data.



MegabyteCoffee.com

 

[juancruzhurtado]

Cool!!!
Thank you very much!!!
I drove myself crazy trying to change something I wasn't supposed to change (and it is not even possible).
I guess it is part of the learning process.

 

[Stingrae]

The machine where you run Aloha Manager from is supposed to be the file server. From what I understand this machine is the one that got infected and thus you made Term1 file server while the infected machine was being dis-infected.

And now this terminal is still acting as file server. To verify that this is the case, check if you can view the past few day's sales reports from Aloha Manager. If not, you will need to do the following steps precisely.

1. Open Aloha Manager goto Maintenance -> Store settings. Under Store settings on the dropdown menu goto System.
You should be on the first tab Date/Time, if not goto that tab. Change the Date of Business to the current date. Click Save. A warning should popup, click on yes.

2. Goto Utilities -> Refresh Data
A warning will popup, click on yes.

3. Click on Start(Default bottom left corner of your screen) -> Run
Type %iberdir% and press enter or click OK
You will see a bunch of folders with dates as their names -note the last date- this will probably be the date before you made the terminal file server.

4. Click on Start -> Run again. Type \\Term1 and click OK
In the explorer window that popups you should see a BOOTDRV folder, open that folder and then open the Aloha folder.
So now we should be looking at the contents of the Aloha folder on the terminal. If you see a few dated folders and a BIN, DATA, BMP, etc. folder, but no NEWDATA folder then you are in the correct folder.

The past few days the day-end process has been running on the temporary file server, which is Term1, that is why you see the past few day's dated folders on the terminal, but not on the Back of House machine.

Now we need to copy these dated folders to the BOH machine.
Mark these dated folders by holding down the Ctrl key and left clicking on them untill they are all selected. So now we should have folders 20100324, 20100325, 20100326, 20100327, 20100328 up to the last day that has passed selected. Easiest is to just drag this group of folders across into an empty space in the Aloha folder of the BOH machine( the first Explorer window we opened ). Be sure to not drop it onto another folder. Be sure to copy them and not move them as it is safest to always keep a backup.

As these files are copied across Aloha will attempt to grind them and a warning might popup telling you to do a database upgrade, ignore this for now. Once all the folders have finished copying across acknowledge the warning.

Aloha will now grind these folders, let the grind processes complete.

5. Almost there. Close the explorer window that points to the Aloha folder on Term1. Open the DATA folder in the Aloha folder on the BOH machine. Click on View at the top of the explorer window and Arrange icons by type. Scroll up or down untill you locate Trans.log, Mirror.log, PRNxx.log, etc. You might not see the .log extension depending on your Folder Options settings, but they should all be at the start or end of the list and have text document icons. Delete these .log files, don't permanently delete them rather move them to the Recycling bin, just to be safe.
Close this window.

6. Final step: In Aloha Manager goto Utilities -> Fileserever Recovery, you might need to do this 2 or 3 times. Go look on the FOH terminals whether the master now only says MASTER instead of MASTER(Server:TERM1) and that the Date of business is correct. Also verify that your sales reports since you made the terminal fileserver are correct and that todays sales report Back of House is correct.

If you have Day-ends running that means someone must have Forced day-ends and you'll have to copy the trans.log from today's dated folder BOH to the DATA folder BOH and set the DOB back to todays date and re-open closed checks and rename the dated folders, but rather post a reply if this is the case.

I hope this helped you.

 

[chilly100]

Thanks was able to get the last few days of sales on to the BoH computer. But was not able to get terminal 3 to reset and have the BoH computer become the file server again. I was able to locate the trans.log but not the mirror.log or the PRNxxx.log. plus on this BoH the fileserver Recovery was located in Aloha Control-System-bottom of Pull Down
Wasnot able to find Maintenance-store setting-.In Aloha Maintenance I do have a System Tab. What do you think?

 

[mmantion]

First CTLSVR could have issues. What version of aloha are you using? You can get it from the screensave on the terminal it will be on the bottom. It will be 6.4.20 or something like that.

Regardless

1st Restart the sever. (I assume you have already done this, if not jump off a cliff)

2nd BACK UP YOUR TRANS.LOG. Which ever terminal is master make sure you back up the trans.log. Make sure its safe maybe put it on a flash drive of e-mail it to yourself to be safe.

3rd I have no idea what version of Aloha Manager you are using. I have used both CFC (the software formally known as AEM) and most every version of Aloha Manager from 3.0 to 6.5. I am fairly certain File server recovery has always been in the utility tab.

4th Did you back up the trans.log?

5th Try to run file sever recovery a couple more times. For argument sake make sure all the registers are on floating logos. (the screen saver thing)

6th WHY ARE YOU IN REDUNDANCY? What happened to put you in redundancy? Did your network fail? are you sure everything is hip? Path to the terminals. Hook a keyboard up to the terminal and path to your server. Check the log on tab for the CTLSVR service, in most cases it is best to set the user to Aloha with the password as hello, there are obvious exceptions to this, but that is another post perhaps.

7th You can try copping the data from the Terminal running as master to the file server. Then running File Server Recovery.

8th after must investigation I have found many things that prevent File Server Recovery from functioning. Most are permissions, Virus scan and other softwares locking trans.log or other marker files. Most virus scans like AVG running residential shield scan and sometimes lock up files with out extensions.

9th IF you are using Radiant hardware, you should really use RAL. Some people hate RAL. I think it is the best code Aloha ever wrote. Yes even better then CMC which is awesome but buggy. If you are using RAL try reloading all the terminals.

I am certainly not an expert and for what things I got wrong please feel free to flame me.

Sorry if I did not go into enough detail.

 

[coorsman]

It sounds like you have version 4.?. What operating system, boh and terminals are you using? Did you change any software settings or re-load aloha after the virus removal?

In our older 4.x sites that have been in redundancy for a while, I usually find it best to replace the bin folder on the file server with the bin folder from the master term1. I don't know why but it usually works every time.

We still have some sites with 95 terminals running on nt servers. (no edc though). If you have 95 terminals and nt servers or mixed 95,98,2k OS's It's very time consuming to get them all to run w/o a problem. Good luck, I'll check back.