Desperate for help with DOS published App.

[PartlyDave]

I've been struggling for months with an old DOS application that my employer still uses. It's a Clipper-based database application that must be nearly 10 years old.

The platform is Metaframe XPa/FR3/SP3 running on Windows 2000 Server, SP4. The server is a Dual 1.2 GHz with 2 GB RAM. I'm using Program Neighborhood client for Windows V8.00.24737. In addition I'm using TameDOS to help manage keyboard polling, etc.

The application can work fine for days, and then at some point all users are dumped out of the application. In looking at the Citrix Management Console when this happens I don't see any inactive sessions. There are no clues in the Windows even logs. I've enable loggin in the ICA client but all is shows is "Disconnected".

After getting booted out of the app the user double clicks on the icon for the published app and gets a login prompt. They enter their username and password and it looks like the app is going to start up, but it immediately switches to the log out "Saving you settings" screen, then closes.

I've tried starting and stopping the ICA browser service and the IMA service when this happens but to no avail. The only thing that fixes the problem is a full reboot of the server.

Something else I've noted: The problem doesn't affect RPD sessions, only ICA sessions.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm getting to the point where I may need to hire a consultant.

 

[dudenjersey]

Is it effecting all your users, the reason i'm asking is we had a similiar problem here and it was spyware on the user's pc (home pc) that was causing the problem. Worth looking at.

 

[PartlyDave]

Yes, when it occurs it affectas all users of the application.

 

[d90srock]

Is the the application running from a mapped drive?

in my case the login script wasn't mapping the drive needed for the application so if the user lost their mapping in the profile the same situation you explained would happen.

 

[djacobus]

Will this DOS APP let the user be logged in multiple times? For ICA sessions you may want to select the option to automatically log off the session once disconnected. If they are being disconnected they either are not logging off correctly or there are network quality issues.

 

[Ogi]

Hi,

Have you set your 16 bit Dos environment to run in seperate sessions?

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[aco636]

Hi, I have had various problems in the past with databases in Citrix and Terminal Services. You mentioned the problem not happening in RDP sessions, how many people use RDP. The reason I ask is if you can be sure its a Citrix problem and not a database problem.

I wonder if the database app is that old if the database can handle reord locks multiple times from a machine with the same name? there is a hack for this that will allow you to force TS to return the username to the database for record locks.

The are also a multitude of hacks for "OpsLocks" opportunistic locking.
The reason I mention all this is I chased a problem down for months before finding out what was going on.

Hope this is of some use
Regards ACO

 

[PartlyDave]

I appreciate all your input.

*d90srock: Is the the application running from a mapped *drive?
*
*In my case the login script wasn't mapping the drive *needed for the application so if the user lost their *mapping in the profile the same situation you explained *would happen.

Yes, when the users run the published app they run the same Kix script that they run to map drives on their PCs, and the app is run via a mapped drive. It seems to me that if it was a matter of the connection to the mapped drive failing it would only effect one user at a time, not everyone simultaneously, and that simply re-runing the published app would re-map the drive. As a said when this failure occurs the only resolution is to reboot the Citrix server.


More info: The farm consists of two Citrix servers. (Host names Citrix1 and Citrix2) They do no load balancing at all. I have the DOS app published on both Citrix servers with different names. The DOS app resides on a file server that does not run Citrix.

Citrix2 is the faster of the two servers and the users of this DOS app use Citrix2 as the primary Citrix server. (Actually, if I can ever get this problem nailed own I'm going to take Citrix1 off line and rebuild it for other non-Citrix purposes)

Whent he published app fails on Citrix2 the users can use the published app on Citrix1 with no problem. Therefore my conclusion is that this is a Citrix problem and not a DOS application problem.