Question

Error 108 File is in use by another user

Asked by: Spinweb922

I have a Dell 6850 Server running Windows 2003 server SP2. About a week ago the server went down unexpectedly. There was at least one user on it using Terminal services running a mission critical clinical database program. The Program is developed by a independed software vendor written in VFoxPro. Since the "crash" of the server, users have complained about slowness and frequent error 108 and getting kicked from the server.

I've visited with Dell and we have ran a series of tests on the server's hardward. Nothing found wrong so far. The software vendor is pointing at the server as the issue and Dell is saying software. I did find a slight issue on the C Drive (system) which was corrected via chkdsk. Here are the specs on the server:

4 quad core Xeon CPS
16 GIGS memory
Raid 5 4X320 SAS Drives
2 partitions C: system D: Data (database)

Average user load via RDP is 40 users
Average mem usage per user is 200 megs

Performance monitor show disk activity on D: increases when the 8 Gig mark is hit. System really starts to drag at this pont. PageFile has been resized and even moved (to C) without any inprovement. Any ideas on what could be wrong?

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Asked On
2009-04-09 at 12:11:33ID24310626
Tags

VFP FroPro Windows Server 2003

Topics

FoxPro Database

,

Windows 2000 Operating System

,

Server Software

Participating Experts
5
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 12:12:30ID: 24110467

Reindex?

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-09 at 12:14:44ID: 24110485

Several reindexing have occured.

 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 12:16:44ID: 24110508

You don't have a backup that you can use?

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-09 at 12:23:31ID: 24110564

Of course we have a backup, however because the system was/is somewhat stable after the incident, users continued to enter data. Now that it's been a week, and the end of a month, it would be impossible to revert to a backup. We do run a test build also to help locate issues, a pre-event backup was pulled and place there. But it also appears sluggish after the 8 gig point is hit. However we have not seen the error 108, although not to many users are accessing it. Just mostly staff that are trying to troubleshoot the issue.

 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 12:32:32ID: 24110627

I can completely relate to your woes.  I am running a dataflex accounting system here.... :O

Perhaps this link helps?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa975932(VS.71).aspx

Have you reviewed your security permissions?  Perhaps something changed when you reestablished something?  I am shooting in the dark.  I hope a VFox Pro comes to your rescue.

Maybe it's time to convince the "powers that be" that it's time to upgrade?

 

by: JF0Posted on 2009-04-09 at 12:35:53ID: 24110651

This error is coded into the application and is not generated by VFP itself. It could be translating a VFP file in use error, or any number of similar issues the software knows about.

WhoHasNT - A tool to determine who is using a file/directory:
http://www.gadgetfactory.com/whohasnt.shtml

File Unlocker:
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/


Hope this helps

 

by: JF0Posted on 2009-04-09 at 12:55:42ID: 24110848

Actually that is a VFP error number, I just didn't recognize it. Regardless...

 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 13:00:26ID: 24110891

Regardless....?

Is it windows causing the problem or is it VFP causing the problem?

 

by: JF0Posted on 2009-04-09 at 13:08:06ID: 24110977

Hard to say, I can only recommend the tools I mentioned above. They will help identify the file and free it from the clutches of evil. hopefully :)

 

by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-04-09 at 13:11:47ID: 24111010

First of all the "mission critical clinical database program" should not use FoxPro database for data storage. FoxPro is good for local data processing and mid sized network applications but surely not for something critical. Better said it is possible to use it but the overhead necessary to do it stable and reliable enough is too big. Mission critical data need SQL Server as data storage which allows true transactional processing and ensures data integrity.

Second, the server crash means some problem on the server (either hardware or operarting system). Reliable server should be resistent against "bad" applications. Terminal services are consuming server resources too much but it is probably impossible to move fox applications to workstations and access data over network which could decrease the server load. It would increase network load, of course.

Error 108 can raise due to the fact the application is waiting for resources much longer than ever before and some timeouts are simply too short. More information is e.g. here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/93348 or here http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Fox/microsoft.public.fox.programmer.exchange/2005-09/msg00895.html .
It could probably be solved by analysing code which causes this error and by better error handling.

You are saying the disk traffic increases when the 8 Gig mark is hit. Does your OS need the whole rest? Did you try to reserve more memory for terminal services? Swapping slows down the application about ten times (hope you are not swapping to the RAID drive it would be even worst).

Sorry I am not more specific but above paragraphs are just ideas without any detail knowledge. You should continue with measurements to decide what is the bottleneck. The server is doing something what it did not do before. Another condition which could affect the application performance would be the amount of data.

 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 13:12:07ID: 24111011

I know creepy magic, if those tools don't work.

Perhaps there are some .tmp files that are clogging the pipes?

 

by: JF0Posted on 2009-04-09 at 13:15:09ID: 24111042

Off point however the author only mentioned the software is VFP. But it is possible to still be using a SQL backend, right?

 

by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-04-09 at 13:23:18ID: 24111142

I hope each terminal service should have its own temp folder possibly not on the RAID drive then it should not cause error 108. This error means some problem in shared resources.

If there is SQL then some measurements on the SQL would be useful, as well. But I don't think so because error 108 is not obvious in client server environment.

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-09 at 13:43:07ID: 24111371

pcelba:
"Error 108 can raise due to the fact the application is waiting for resources much longer than ever before and some timeouts are simply too short"  

I think you might have something here as the error occurs when the system is sluggish. So this maybe more of a server OS issue than a VFP issue? And BTW you're preaching to the choir on the mission critical app using VFP, I'd much rather it be SQL.

I just completed a sfc /scannow, nothing found there.  
I appreciate all the comments, keep them coming.

 

by: JF0Posted on 2009-04-09 at 13:46:43ID: 24111398

Is there antivirus installed on the server? You may consider exempting the vfp software folder.


 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 13:48:23ID: 24111422

Perhaps you should get some sort of deleted data recovery tool.  Like this:
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

It's a tad bit "hokey", but it worked for me once.  I had to kill a medicine man to get it, though.

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-09 at 14:06:24ID: 24111639

JF0:
The data files are excluded, but we finally shut down the whole service to see if it was affecting performance.

MrMintanet:
I've used recovermyfiles before, if you like a lot of generic names on recoved file it ok. But in this case we didn't really lose anything, we just have a slower server.
 

 

by: MrMintanetPosted on 2009-04-09 at 14:07:56ID: 24111661

Perhaps you should upgrade the PSU?

 

by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-04-09 at 14:09:42ID: 24111691

If it is not problem of large FoxPro data then yes, I think this is more server or OS issue than VFP issue. Errors start rising after the crash. There is something wrong which consumes server resources more than before, so it is slower. It could be some hardware problem which is solved by OS adaptability but it consumes more time than before, it can be some OS patch or update (did you check installed OS updates?).

VFP has its own memory space on terminal service and 200 megs should be enough. Do you have some data size statistics to avoid large VFP data as the possible reason? VFP is able to use disk more heavily if data size exceeds certain limit. Did the application pass some stress testing?

And, sorry for the preaching :-).

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-09 at 14:21:33ID: 24111799

pcelba:
Good points. The server did indeed take March updates prior to the crash. However they were removed after we realized there was an issue. I've sent a 6 hour preformance log to Dell hoping they might see something I've missed. I'll keep everyone informed.  

 

by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-04-09 at 14:32:53ID: 24111912

I've exhausted my ideas already, hope Dell has some fresh forces. The truth is any VFP application is possible to optimize and brute force is necessary for servers.

 

by: jrbbldrPosted on 2009-04-10 at 07:08:17ID: 24115634

When I have encountered "File In Use" errors, I have used a tool which will identify who has that file in-use.    

The tool I use is  WhoHasNT  (http://www.gadgetfactory.com/whohasnt.shtml).    It will show the Windows login name for anyone who is currently using a file (of any type).

First I have to have sufficient Error Logging/Trapping in my application to determine which specific file(s) might be the problem.   And I need to determine where in the code the problem occurred so that I can more readily duplicate the problem.

 Once I know the file(s)
I then start with that tool and if someone is found, then I address how/why/when, etc. and work to resolve the conflict.    If that tool does not show anyone using the file, then the OS is somehow 'confused' and telling VFP wrong info.   That is a much more complicated issue, but it too can be chased down.

Good Luck

 

by: cthulthuPosted on 2009-04-14 at 06:41:41ID: 24138037

I've seen situations with terminal server where a previous session cannot be reconnected upon a new login and it creates a new session (I don't recall the error message).  Is it possible that the TS session that was cutoff has never been properly terminated?  Does the error message and sluggishness problems happen only when the person who was online during the crash reconnects?

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-20 at 09:01:17ID: 24185861

This issue was resolved by a complete wipe of the server and reinstallation of the operating system. A backup of the  Foxpro files were tested  (pre-crash) and also exhibited the same errors and freezing. So something must had broke in the OS during the crash. I awarded pcelba the points as he was right in determining the error 108 can be caused by sluggish performance on the server.

 

by: Spinweb922Posted on 2009-04-20 at 09:02:40ID: 31568686

See the last comment for how we resolved this issue. Thanks!

 

by: pcelbaPosted on 2009-04-20 at 13:25:52ID: 24188331

Thanks for points. But I have to say it is almost impossible to help remotely in similar cases and you did most of the work. Suggestions and ideas from others were useful to me, as well.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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