Interrupt, stop or timeout LotusScript Agent internally - lotus-domino

I would like to timeout a LotusScript agent internally. The Agent Manager has a timeout of 60 min with one task, which is needed for some agents. In my case the agent normally runs 7 - 10 min, but it might hang on opening a mail calendar profile. It just hangs, does nothing but consuming CPU and blocking other agents from running.
Is there any way to stop/interrupt the agent internally, so that I can set a timeout of 30 sec for that operation and if it does not succeed stop the agent?
Problematic Code Snippet:
Set notesDocument = notesDatabase.GetProfileDocument("calendarprofile")
Error on the Mail Server short time after the problem (other server than the agent server)
SchedMgr: Error processing calendar profile document (NoteID: NT00000902) in database XXXX/XXXX.nsf: Document has been deleted

Understanding internally as without external agent, process and so on.
If no operation is blocking, you can instanciate timer, check periodically if your time is comsumed and end graccefullly your code.
If your code is blocked (as in your example) on an operation, there is nothing you can do: no preampt task, no interruption.
I had the same issue when using ole to write in Excel. When a dialogue box were openend in Excel the task (run by http) just stoped forever. The max time execution even don't work.

As per #Emmanuel's answer, I don't believe you can do anything to set a timeout on the operation that is hanging. However, since you know about the problem you might be able to work around it using the NotesNoteCollection class. I.e., something like this:
dim c as NotesNoteCollection
set c = db.CreateNoteCollection(false)
c.selectProfiles = true
c.BuildCollection
Then you loop through the collection using id=c.getFirstNoteId and id=c.getNextNoteId(id) in a pattern similar to what you use to loop through a regular NotesDocumentCollection, retrieving each profile document using doc =db.GetDocumentByID(id) and checking with doc.isValid to make sure it's not a deletion stub (which seems to be the root of your problem), and then checking if it is the calendarprofile by calling doc.getItemValue("$Name") and examining the value in the 0th element of the value array. It's a string containing a prefix "$profile" followed by an underscore, a number (three digits, always?), and then the profile doc name and another underscore. (In some profile docs, $Name would also contain a username, which IIRC occurs after the second underscore, but that's not the case with the calendarprofile doc. Use NotesPeek to examine a mail database to see the format.) Then, once you've verified that the document exists and is not a stub, go ahead and use db.getProfileDocument to assure that you're working on the cached version of the note.
You might also want to investigate why your code is hanging. I've not run into a situation like this before, but I'm wondering if there might be an excessive number of deletion stubs in the database and your code is triggering some sort of cleanup operation on them that is taking a very long time. That's just a guess, but this behavior isn't normal and even though I believe you can work around it, that might not be true. It's just a guess. And building and iterating the NotesNoteCollection might even trigger the same bad behavior for all I know.

Related

How to display a status depending on the data flow position

Consider for example this modified Simple TCP sample program:
How can I display the current state of the program like
Wait for Connection
Connected
Connection terminated
on the frontpanel, depending on where the "data flow" currently is.
The easiest way to do this is to place a string indicator on your front panel and write messages to a local variable of this indicator at each point where you want to see a status update.
You need to keep in mind how LabVIEW dataflow works: code will execute as soon as the data it depends on becomes available. Sometimes you can use existing structures to enforce this - for example, if you put a string constant inside your loop and wire it to a local variable terminal outside the loop, the write will only happen after the loop exits. Sometimes you may need to enforce that dataflow artificially, for example by placing your operation inside a sequence frame and connecting a wire to the border of the sequence: then what's inside the sequence will only happen after data arrives on that wire. (This is about the only thing you should use a sequence for!)
This method is not guaranteed to be deterministic, but it's usually good enough for giving a simple status indication to the user.
A better version of the above would be to send the status messages on a queue or notifier which you read, and update the status indicator, in a separate loop. The queue and notifier write functions have error terminals which can help you to enforce sequence. A notifier is like the local variable in that you will only see the most recent update; a queue keeps all the data you write to it in the right order so would be more suitable if you want to log all the updates to a scrolling list or log file. With this solution you could add more features: for example the read loop could add a timestamp in front of each message so you could see how recent it was.
A really good solution to this general problem is to use a design pattern based on a state machine. Now your program flow is clearly organised into different states and it's very easy to add in functionality like sending a different message from each state. There are good examples and project templates for these design patterns included with recent versions of LabVIEW.
You should be able to find more information on any of the terms in bold in the LabVIEW help or on the NI website.

Is it possible to execute a branch as a different user in *nix?

Is it possible to execute a method as a different user in Linux (or SELinux specifically)? The programs that I have run in individual sandboxes, each with a different user and process id. I have a situation where I have to execute a branch of code as a different user and with different process id to prevent the access of the memory and disk space of the code that's spawning it.
If not possible, can you throw some light on how much of the kernel code has to be changed to achieve it? (I understand its subjective. Alternatively, if you can suggest what and how to go about it, that will be much helpful).
Protecting some resources from other codes executing on the same machine is precisely what lead to the process and UID invention.
If you are searching for a mechanism that looks like a simple function call, I would say it's impossible because it requires the memory to be shared between the caller and the callee. However, using fork/exec (or wrappers like system()) will give you some isolation as long as you deal with parameters/results using system objects like program parameters or pipes.
Although, the fact that *nix user is meant to protect processes from one-another, requires that an explicit relationship be built between two users to have one user act on behalf of the other.
Actually, you may want to:
define a sudoers policy which gives the right to your first user to run a command (or a particular command) as the second one.
use popen() (or system()) in your first program to call the less privileged code.
if any, pass the parameters and parse the result from stdout
As an extra, you may use the same binary for both executions, this way, all the code can be at the same location.

Is there a way in vb.net to make process start closing my program?

My program checks if there is a new version of itself. If yes it would exit and start an updater that replaces it and then restarts.
My problem is that I haven't found any info on how to make process start right after closing the actual program.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
I intended to add a comment, but I'm too low in points here. The updater itself should probably contain a check to determine whether your application is running an instance, and it should contain a timeout loop that performs this check and factor the timeout following it's startup state. That way you can awaken it, and close your application. The updater should just determine your application is not running, compare versions perform the intended update operation.
a possible solution would also be to create a task via tash sceduler or cron job, starting an out of process application, like CMD.exe.. which brings me to my original comment-question: in regards to what Operating System(s) and Platform(s) is your program intended for?

How to override edit locks

I'm writing a WLST script to deploy some WAR's and an EAR. However, intermittently, the script will time out because it can't seem to get an edit lock (this script is part of a chain of many other scripts). I was wondering, is there a way to override or stop any current locks on the server? This is only a temporary solution, but in the interest of time, it will do for now.
Thanks.
You could try setting a wait period and timeout:
startEdit([waitTimeInMillis], [timeoutInMillis], [exclusive]).
Are other scripts erroring out, leaving the session locked? You could try adding exception handling around those. Also, if you have 'Automatically acquire lock" enabled in the Admin Console and you use the admin console sometimes it can cause problems if you are running scripts at the same time, even though you are not making "lock-requiring" changes.
Also, are you using the same user for the chained scripts?
Within WLST, you can pass a number as a parameter to gain an exclusive lock. This allows the script to grab a different lock than the regular one that's used whenever an administrator locks from the console. It also prevents two instances of the same script from stepping on each other.
However, this creates complex change merge scenarios that are best avoided (by processes).
Oracle's documentation on configuration locks can be found here.
Alternatively, if you want the script to temporarily relieve any existing locks regardless of the pending changes, you may as well disable change management from the console, minimizing the inconvenience caused.
WLST also contains the cancelEdit command that you could run before you startEdit. Hope one of these options pan out!
To take the configuration change lock from another administrator:
If another administrator already has the configuration lock, the following message appears: Another user already owns the lock. You will need to either wait for the lock to be released, or take the lock.
Locate the Change Center in the upper left corner of the
Administration Console.
Click Take Lock & Edit.
Make your configuration changes.
In the Change Center, click Activate Changes. Not all changes take
effect immediately. Some require a restart (see Use the Change
Center).
As long as you're running WLST as an administrative user, you should be able to jump into an existing edit session with the edit() command - I've done a quick test with two admin users, one in the Admin Console, and one using WLST, and it appears to work fine - I can see the changes in the Admin Console session inside the WLST interpreter.
You could put a very simple exception handler around your calls to startEdit that will log the exception's stack trace, but do nothing else. And then rely on the edit call to pop you into the change session.
Relying on that is going to be tricky though if another script has started an edit session and is expecting to be able to commit that change session itself - you'll be getting exceptions and unreliable behaviour across multiple invocations.

How can I speed up batch processing job in Coldfusion?

Every once in awhile I am fed a large data file that my client uploads and that needs to be processed through CMFL. The problem is that if I put the processing on a CF page, then it runs into a timeout issue after 120 seconds. I was able to move the processing code to a CFC where it seems to not have the timeout issue. However, sometime during the processing, it causes ColdFusion to crash and has to restarted. There are a number of database queries (5 or more, mixture of updates and selects) required for each line (8,000+) of the file I go through as well as other logic provided by me in the form of CFML.
My question is what would be the best way to go through this file. One caveat, I am not able to move the file to the database server and process it entirely with the DB. However, would it be more efficient to pass each line to a stored procedure that took care of everything? It would still be a lot of calls to the database, but nothing compared to what I have now. Also, what would be the best way to provide feedback to the user about how much of the file has been processed?
Edit:
I'm running CF 6.1
I just did a similar thing and use CF often for data parsing.
1) Maintain a file upload table (Parent table). For every file you upload you should be able to keep a list of each file and what status it is in (uploaded, processed, unprocessed)
2) Temp table to store all the rows of the data file. (child table) Import the entire data file into a temporary table. Attempting to do it all in memory will inevitably lead to some errors. Each row in this table will link to a file upload table entry above.
3) Maintain a processing status - For each row of the datafile you bring in, set a "process/unprocessed" tag. This way if it breaks, you can start from where you left off. As you run through each line, set it to be "processed".
4) Transaction - use cftransaction if possible to commit all of it at once, or at least one line at a time (with your 5 queries). That way if something goes boom, you don't have one row of data that is half computed/processed/updated/tested.
5) Once you're done processing, set the file name entry in the table in step 1 to be "processed"
By using the approach above, if something fails, you can set it to start where it left off, or at least have a clearer path of where to start investigating, or worst case clean up in your data. You will have a clear way of displaying to the user the status of the current upload processing, where it's at, and where it left off if there was an error.
If you have any questions, let me know.
Other thoughts:
You can increase timeouts, give the VM more memory, put it in 64 bit but all of those will only increase the capacity of your system so much. It's a good idea to do these per call and do it in conjunction with the above.
Java has some neat file processing libraries that are available as CFCS. if you run into a lot of issues with speed, you can use one of those to read it into a variable and then into the database
If you are playing with XML, do not use coldfusion's xml parsing. It works well for smaller files and has fits when things get bigger. There are several cfc's written out there (check riaforge, etc) that wrap some excellent java libraries for parsing xml data. You can then create a cfquery manually if need be with this data.
It's hard to tell without more info, but from what you have said I shoot out three ideas.
The first thing, is with so many database operations, it's possible that you are generating too much debugging. Make sure that under Debug Output settings in the administrator that the following settings are turned off.
Enable Robust Exception Information
Enable AJAX Debug Log Window
Request Debugging Output
The second thing I would do is look at those DB queries and make sure they are optimized. Make sure selects are happening with indicies, etc.
The third thing I would suspect is that the file hanging out in memory is probably suboptimal.
I would try looping through the file using file looping:
<cfloop file="#VARIABLES.filePath#" index="VARIABLES.line">
<!--- Code to go here --->
</cfloop>
Have you tried an event gateway? I believe those threads are not subject to the same timeout settings as page request threads.
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is the recommended tool for complex ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) work, which is what this sounds like. (It can be configured to access files on other servers.) The question might be, can you work up an interface between Cold Fusion and SSIS?
If you can upgrade to cf8 and take advantage of cfloop file="" which would give you greater speed and the file would not be put in memory (which is probably the cause of the crashing).
Depending on the situation you are encountering you could also use cfthread to speed up processing.
Currently, an event gateway is the only way to get around the timeout limits of an HTTP request cycle. CF does not have a way to process CF pages offline, that is, there is no command-line invocation (one of my biggest gripes about CF - very little offling processing).
Your best bet is to use an Event Gateway or rewrite your parsing logic in straight Java.
I had to do the same thing, Ben Nadel has written a bunch of great articles uses java file io, to allow you to more speedily read files, write files etc...
Really helped improve the performance of our csv importing application.