Disconnected users

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Digital AlphaStation 500/400 128 Mbytes
ARBMQ/MGRWVW>sh us/fu
OpenVMS User Processes at 23-JAN-2004 14:59:29.48
Total number of users = 3, number of processes = 8

Username Process Name PID Terminal
460405345 46040534$CDE002 000001A3 MBA844: (disconnected)
460405345 460405345 0000019F MBA838: (disconnected)
460405345 460405345_1 000001A0 (subprocess of 0000019F)
460405345 460405345_2 000001A7 (subprocess of 000001A3)
460405345 _FTA4: 0000019D FTA4:
650709948 FOE010_GAMMA 0000014D MBA782: (disconnected)
SYSMGR_WVW SYSMGR_WVW 000001BE TNA5:
(Host: SPVMX1 User: SYSMGR_WVW)
SYSMGR_WVW _TNA6: 000001BF TNA6:
(Host: WSYS01 User: SYSMGR_WVW)

Does anyone knows why users are disconnected ? Why are they disconnected and not deleted and does anyone has a script to remove them safely ?

It seems that they are not always without user because when I did stop/id someone yelled.

[Jan van den Ende]

Wim,

I don't know for sure if this also applies for Stations, but we have quite a log of disconnected users.
The users connect to VMS by terminal emulator from Mickeyware systems.
And over there they are trained to close an application by 'crossing it dead'.
And the (at least our) terminal emulator does not do a clean rundown, but just kills the connection, indeed leaving it disconnected at the VMS side.

And yes, we have a cleanup job for it.
I will make it a bit more generic, take out our too-private bits, translate instructions and comments into English, and post it at DCL.OPENVMS.ORG.
Just a little patience please.

Jan

[Lokesh_2]

Hi ,

I have observed the similar in my decwindow session when I open Mozilla browser. The session terminal will be a MBA and it will show as disconnected though my browser is still open. If I close my browser, the disconnected MBA goes away. Or if I kill my disconnected process with stop/id , the mozilla browser got closed. This happens to all applications which are started by decwindow for example style manager or decwindow mail...etc. Are your users using mozilla browser ..or some other application which create MBA device ?? If yes, then it will be shown as Disconnected only.

Thanks & regards,
Lokesh Jain

[Lokesh_2]

OK , I found the answer now. This is expected behaviour. See below explanation:

____________________________________

The show user application first obtains the terminal name using the
System Service $GETJPI call. The Session Manager creates a mailbox
for communication with a created detached process. The show user
application then calls the $GETDVI service with this device and
using the item code of JPI$_TT_PHYDEVNAM JPI$_TT_ACCPORNAM to obtain
the actual terminal name (VTA1931: into LTA2115: ((DDE004/DDE004-30)).
The $GETDVI service returns null since the mailbox is not a terminal.

If the physical device name is null, a check is made to see if the
process is batch, network, interactive, remote, or detached. In
this situation, since the process is interactive and the terminal
field is not blank (MBAnnn), the show user applications assumes
that the process is disconnected.

This is expected behavior.

NOTE: A disconnected process is a process which is not batch,
network, interactive, remote, or detached, does not have a
physical device, but does have a terminal.
\
_________________________________

Thanks & regards,
Lokesh Jain

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

We use KEA!X X terminal simulation. I find processes of the user that have an startup date older than the primary cde process.

Thus I assume that they are leftovers from previous sessions (the user can stop the session by close app. in windows, choose cde exit, power off PC, etc). So I need to know which processes is disconnected from cde.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello,

I agree that there is a good chance that this a problem connected to improperly closed terminal emulators.

One way to get rid of such zombies is to run an idle killer. On possible candidate is Watcher.

Check out

http://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv_search.exe?package=watcher&description=&author=&system=Either&language=All

Greetings, Martin

[Jan van den Ende]

Wim,

the promised procedure is at

http://dcl.openvms.org/stories.php?story=04/01/23/8559298

In the mean time I understood that on Workstations you have to check that the process is NOT connected to an MBA.. device.

Jan

[Ian Miller.]

would enabling the keepalive thing for tcp connections help?

User education may be the best route but unfourtunally also the hardest :-)

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Ian : indeed the keepalive must be enabled with a low value. This I found one month ago.

Jan : this seems more like something to kill something in a VT context, not cde.

Martin : this is very good if you know the application can handle kills correctly. I'm however stuck with VERY old application written in DSM.

Lokesh : very good. It explains why some disconnected processes are normal.

I will wait until the next occurence to better analyze the problem. I have the impression that cde doesn't always cleanup (nice word for killing) the complete environment when it exits.

All of you : Have a nice weekend and thanks for the (moral) help.

[Willem Grooters]

To all:
I am aware of the problem that an Alpha workstation is, in some aspects, different that an Alpha server. There are things you cannot do: boot over DSSI, for example (run down the forum and look for problems with KFPSA...)
I don't understand the difference, since for the rest, workstations can very well be used as servers - where VMS is concerned. Perhaps the category 'abuse of workstation' but alas, this is the only affordable method of usiung VMS in a low-budget environment.