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jstone-31-Visitor
1-Visitor
February 9, 2017
Question

CAD Worker jobs failing

  • February 9, 2017
  • 17 replies
  • 9111 views

Due to previous sins, we have a number of files without viewables and so started a job to recreate virtually all of them. The problem is that it's prone to failing.

At times, it runs fine and then everything will start failing and the job logs indicate "Error, did not find available worker of type PROE". When this happens, nothing will get through. Then, after pulling my hair out for a day or so, it'll start running jobs again (from time to time I resubmit a couple to see if anything's changed).

If I go to the Worker Agent Administration window, it indicates "Fails to Start" for the PROE worker. I had luck one time just clicking on the green flag to start the job, but that only worked once. These jobs all run in PublisherQueueL. "Standard" jobs from check-ins, promotion requests, etc come through fine in either the L or the M queue while these resubmitted jobs are failing.

What would cause the PROE worker to work only when it wants to (and how do I convince it to)?

Windchill 10.2, M030.

    17 replies

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    MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
    22-Sapphire I
    February 9, 2017

    I've spent the last few months on a similar effort - and finally understand how all the elements and interfaces related to publishing work.  Had to read and re-read everything written by PTC on this a few times, then get a beer, and come back and read again.  Currently working on documenting with a few diagrams.  Good puzzle if there ever was one - and documented like a treasure map with only a few clues

    Key things to monitor live:

    From Windchill browser

    - Work Agent Admin window (red/green flags)

    - WVS Job Monitor

    Desktop of Worker Machine

    - task manager: worker daemon, worker monitor, worker helper

    - creoview_adapter setup folder: monitor logs

    - creoview shared worker folder: temp folder used for the job

    Database:

    - derivedimage table

    Multiple times I deleted all the published viewables from our production system and republished all - using various recipe and other settings.  Finally have it really dialed in.

    J
    jstone-31-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    February 9, 2017

    Like so many things in Windchill, there seems to be an abundance of windows and buttons to click to accomplish anything!

    I do watch the Work Agent window, though as I said, clicking the green flag doesn't start anything. And the WVS Job Monitor is where I see failed jobs, resubmit them and check on Executing and Successful jobs. I also monitor by refreshing the Queue Management window.

    Is that the standard Windows Task Manager where you're monitoring the worker daemon, worker monitor and worker helper? I don't see those processes in there.

    B
    BineshKumar12-Explorer
    2-Explorer
    February 9, 2017

    This is a good read - PTC Windchill Visualization Services (WVS) and Windchill Queues

    To answer your question, there are couple of properties you can set in wvs.properties to restart the cad agent after it is marked as fails to start

    • cadagent.startattemptretrytime=90
    • cadagent.maxstartattempts=5

    If you want to set it specific to worker type you can do something like this

    cadagent.startattemptretrytime.PROE=

      J
      jstone-31-VisitorAuthor
      1-Visitor
      February 9, 2017

      Thanks, that is a good overview article. I've been reading what I can but I can't find anything about the PROE worker erratically not starting.

      Before messing with something like wvs.properties, is it logical that these settings would make it work some times but not others? I hesitate to mess with such settings when things have worked fine in the past. Initially, we thought it was the shear volume of resubmitting the entire database for viewables that was clogging it and by resubmitting them we'd eventually get through it all. But once it stops, it won't even do a single resubmit. While standard jobs go though fine...

      B
      BineshKumar12-Explorer
      2-Explorer
      February 10, 2017

      A fails to start condition occurs when the worker daemon fails to connect to start the worker. This could be anything from a unresponsive GS daemon service to unavailable CAD license or a timeout in the network. Once the CAD agent issues the startup command, it waits for  the worker to respond within the  start uptime mentioned in your worker configuration, It retries, if I remember like 3 times, if it does not get any response, the worker agent will mark the worker as "Fails to start". That's it, it remains in that state until an administrator manually starts the worker, or till the BGMS running CAD agent is restarted.

      I think in 10.2 release, two properties were introduced to recover from the "fails to start" state. cadagent.startattemptretrytime is the amount of time  CAD agent will wait after the failed before attempting to start again under the same conditions. Let's say you set  cadagent.startattemptretrytime=60, the condition will get cleared every 60 seconds, after which it will again try and use that worker. cadagent.maxstartattempts provides the ability to set the number of start attempts to start the worker. If set to cadagent.maxstartattempts=5, this sets the number of restart tries at 5

      J
      jstone-31-VisitorAuthor
      1-Visitor
      February 9, 2017

      OK, so I restarted the CAD Worker machine and things are working again. In past attempts this seemed to work one time and not the other, and even the "successful" attempt seemed to be delayed so I wasn't sure that was even the fix.

      I'll keep resubmitting in batches and see how it goes...

      M
      MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
      22-Sapphire I
      February 9, 2017

      Can generally just restart the GS Worker Daemon service (on the worker machine) instead of rebooting it.

      Observe on the worker machine:

      - folders where publishing occurs

      - task manager processes

      I'm going to make a document on this sometime soon - maybe will sell copies for $1 each.

      J
      jstone-31-VisitorAuthor
      1-Visitor
      February 9, 2017

      If you can make this clear and logical, you could get a lot more than that! Maybe $2! 

      I expect this will fail again eventually and when it does, I'll try restarting the service rather than the whole machine.

      S
      SergeyEfimov1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      February 10, 2017

      Can you show the Creo adapter log files?

      J
      jstone-31-VisitorAuthor
      1-Visitor
      February 10, 2017

      Forgive me, Sergey, but where do I find those particular log files?

      S
      SergeyEfimov1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      February 13, 2017

      Usually a <creo_view_adapters>\proe_setup folder

      B
      byork17-Peridot
      17-Peridot
      June 7, 2017

      So the -4 is a missing reference file of some type. Usually by opening the assembly in Creo and looking at the message log you can see what is missing.

      On the fails to start issue, we were having the same problem so we implemented the recommendations of this article.

      https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS162756

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