Sage 100

Hi

Sage100 advanced 2018.  "randomly" every few days, a user will get "No valid servers found".   Looking at their local Launcher folder, the sota.ini is almost empty (see screen shot below) and the "good" sota.ini file is called "sota.tmp".  If we rename things, then it works fine, but at some point will happen again.   It is "easy" to fix, but does anyone know the underlying cause of this and how to stop it ?

Thanks
Jeff


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Jeff Fiddelman
Exeplex, LLC
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For me since days of Sage it's always occurred on a Terminal Server and when the timing was right with multiple users clicking the Sage icon at the same time. I haven't looked at it for awhile but back then when you start up, the SOTA.INI would get locked so the [Active Server] portion of the file could get updated. I presume prior to this the original file gets copied to a .TMP file.

If you really wanted to get around it, you can have theoretically have a separate location for Workstation Setup for each TS / Citrix user so each has a separate sota.ini. Otherwise if you go MD route, look at the start up process. I've considered suggesting a fix involving doing SET_PARAM 'LU' ("lock unnecessary") and then OPEN the serial file, OR something involving having the 2nd user WAIT while 1st user finishes updating [Active Server] but I never got around to researching / testing this fully.

** There may be other factors such as antivirus scanning which just slow down the process and cause this issue to be more likely. @Carmen Cruz do you know?

------------------------------
Alnoor Cassim

Free Agent Developer and Consultant
CallForHelp.biz
Email: alnoor@callforhelp.biz
Orange County, CA
------------------------------

Sage never fixed this issue or determined the cause.  Seems to only happens with remote users.  It could be like you said Alnoor.  Users coming in at the exact same time.  I just make sure to always have a backup of the Sota.ini file and a batch to replace it as needed in the launcher directory.  It's not like Sage has real servers to do hard core testing on.  Without a true client environment set up like in the real world there are many things that they will never be able to address due to lack of duplication abilities to troubleshoot.

------------------------------
Carmen Cruz
Senior Specialist, Technical Consultant
SWK Technologies Inc.
Carmen.Cruz@SWKTech.com CA
973-437-3984
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-23-2019 09:40
From: Alnoor Cassim
Subject: Corrupt Sota.ini causes "No valid servers found"

For me since days of Sage it's always occurred on a Terminal Server and when the timing was right with multiple users clicking the Sage icon at the same time. I haven't looked at it for awhile but back then when you start up, the SOTA.INI would get locked so the [Active Server] portion of the file could get updated. I presume prior to this the original file gets copied to a .TMP file.

If you really wanted to get around it, you can have theoretically have a separate location for Workstation Setup for each TS / Citrix user so each has a separate sota.ini. Otherwise if you go MD route, look at the start up process. I've considered suggesting a fix involving doing SET_PARAM 'LU' ("lock unnecessary") and then OPEN the serial file, OR something involving having the 2nd user WAIT while 1st user finishes updating [Active Server] but I never got around to researching / testing this fully.

** There may be other factors such as antivirus scanning which just slow down the process and cause this issue to be more likely. @Carmen Cruz do you know?

------------------------------
Alnoor Cassim

Free Agent Developer and Consultant
CallForHelp.biz
Email: alnoor@callforhelp.biz
Orange County, CA
------------------------------

"Without a true client environment set up like in the real world there are many things that they will never be able to address due to lack of duplication abilities to troubleshoot."
This explains a lot!

------------------------------
Kevin Moyes
Technical Systems Analyst
Munjal White Consulting Co.
Toronto ON
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2019 23:18
From: Carmen Cruz
Subject: Corrupt Sota.ini causes "No valid servers found"

Sage never fixed this issue or determined the cause.  Seems to only happens with remote users.  It could be like you said Alnoor.  Users coming in at the exact same time.  I just make sure to always have a backup of the Sota.ini file and a batch to replace it as needed in the launcher directory.  It's not like Sage has real servers to do hard core testing on.  Without a true client environment set up like in the real world there are many things that they will never be able to address due to lack of duplication abilities to troubleshoot.

------------------------------
Carmen Cruz
Senior Specialist, Technical Consultant
SWK Technologies Inc.
Carmen.Cruz@SWKTech.com CA
973-437-3984
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 01-23-2019 09:40
From: Alnoor Cassim
Subject: Corrupt Sota.ini causes "No valid servers found"

For me since days of Sage it's always occurred on a Terminal Server and when the timing was right with multiple users clicking the Sage icon at the same time. I haven't looked at it for awhile but back then when you start up, the SOTA.INI would get locked so the [Active Server] portion of the file could get updated. I presume prior to this the original file gets copied to a .TMP file.

If you really wanted to get around it, you can have theoretically have a separate location for Workstation Setup for each TS / Citrix user so each has a separate sota.ini. Otherwise if you go MD route, look at the start up process. I've considered suggesting a fix involving doing SET_PARAM 'LU' ("lock unnecessary") and then OPEN the serial file, OR something involving having the 2nd user WAIT while 1st user finishes updating [Active Server] but I never got around to researching / testing this fully.

** There may be other factors such as antivirus scanning which just slow down the process and cause this issue to be more likely. @Carmen Cruz do you know?

------------------------------
Alnoor Cassim

Free Agent Developer and Consultant
CallForHelp.biz
Email: alnoor@callforhelp.biz
Orange County, CA

Struggled with the same thing. In one case this reported began after a StarShip web update ( back in October 2018). 

I suspected anti-virus but <g class="gr_ gr_308 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="308" data-gr-id="308">naturally</g> there's no way it could be that (Source: The IT Guy)

We have worked around it by using the same solution you mention which is copying the sota.ini from a backup.

I think but not 100% that the customer solved it by (drum roll) modifying AV exclusions.

------------------------------
Wayne Schulz
Consultant
Schulz Consulting
Glastonbury CT
860-516-8990
http://www.s-consult.com
------------------------------

I have seen this happen with Antivirus.  I think it was Webroot but that might be a corrupt memory error....

------------------------------
Phil McIntosh
President
Friendly Systems, Inc.
Asheville NC
678.273.4010 ext 5
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-23-2019 09:45
From: Wayne Schulz
Subject: Corrupt Sota.ini causes "No valid servers found"

Struggled with the same thing. In one case this reported began after a StarShip web update ( back in October 2018).

I suspected anti-virus but <g class="gr_ gr_308 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="308" data-gr-id="308">naturally</g> there's no way it could be that (Source: The IT Guy)

We have worked around it by using the same solution you mention which is copying the sota.ini from a backup.

I think but not 100% that the customer solved it by (drum roll) modifying AV exclusions.

------------------------------
Wayne Schulz
Consultant
Schulz Consulting
Glastonbury CT
860-516-8990
http://www.s-consult.com
------------------------------

We have this happen in our environment. What @Alnoor Cassim stated is exactly it.
This especially happens on <g class="gr_ gr_61 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="61" data-gr-id="61">terminal</g> server. In our case, we've never seen it due to the A/V, though certainly possible. However, we initially thought it was because 2 users would be launching sage at the same exact moment, (which seemed unlikely).
Then we discovered, especially in a RemoteApp situation, a user "double-clicking" the Sage icon, will actually try to launch it twice, and the Sota.ini will end up in a corrupt state. the .tmp stays in place though, so the fix is easy.

If you have a lot of users logging in on a terminal server, it's hard to control whether they sometimes double click and lock everyone out. So we simply have a Scheduled Task that runs every minute on the server that checks for the SOTA.INI and if it finds it to be corrupt, it fixes it. We set this up by default on most of our Sage installations.

I have attached the PowerShell script, and the <g class="gr_ gr_49 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="49" data-gr-id="49">xml</g> to import it as a Scheduled Task in case anyone is interested. This solution has 100% eliminated this problem for us. 
p.s: Modify the paths in the script to match your environment.

Cheers!

------------------------------
George Khairallah
CTO | <g class="gr_ gr_51 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="51" data-gr-id="51">gotomyerp</g>, LLC
george.k@gotomyerp.com | 877-888-5525
http://gotomyerp.com/
------------------------------

This came up suddenly on a longtime user of Sage 100. And I have other users where they are in a TS environment that never get this. I'm not sold on the too many people clicking at one time.

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Wayne Schulz - Schulz Consulting - 860-516-8990
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2019 02:17
From: George Khairallah
Subject: Corrupt Sota.ini causes "No valid servers found"

We have this happen in our environment. What @Alnoor Cassim stated is exactly it.
This especially happens on <g class="gr_ gr_61 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="61" data-gr-id="61">terminal</g> server. In our case, we've never seen it due to the A/V, though certainly possible. However, we initially thought it was because 2 users would be launching sage at the same exact moment, (which seemed unlikely).
Then we discovered, especially in a RemoteApp situation, a user "double-clicking" the Sage icon, will actually try to launch it twice, and the Sota.ini will end up in a corrupt state. the .tmp stays in place though, so the fix is easy.

If you have a lot of users logging in on a terminal server, it's hard to control whether they sometimes double click and lock everyone out. So we simply have a Scheduled Task that runs every minute on the server that checks for the SOTA.INI and if it finds it to be corrupt, it fixes it. We set this up by default on most of our Sage installations.

I have attached the PowerShell script, and the <g class="gr_ gr_49 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="49" data-gr-id="49">xml</g> to import it as a Scheduled Task in case anyone is interested. This solution has 100% eliminated this problem for us.
p.s: Modify the paths in the script to match your environment.

Cheers!

------------------------------
George Khairallah
CTO | <g class="gr_ gr_51 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="51" data-gr-id="51">gotomyerp</g>, LLC
george.k@gotomyerp.com | 877-888-5525
http://gotomyerp.com/
------------------------------

Thanks for this @George Khairallah

Just implemented this on a Sage 2020 Premium upgrade with 35 users logging onto an RDS server. The no valid servers found message was appearing way to frequently and keeping us busy renaming the files.
​

------------------------------
John Kerr
Net at Work
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2019 02:17
From: George Khairallah
Subject: Corrupt Sota.ini causes "No valid servers found"

We have this happen in our environment. What @Alnoor Cassim stated is exactly it.
This especially happens on <g class="gr_ gr_61 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="61" data-gr-id="61">terminal</g> server. In our case, we've never seen it due to the A/V, though certainly possible. However, we initially thought it was because 2 users would be launching sage at the same exact moment, (which seemed unlikely).
Then we discovered, especially in a RemoteApp situation, a user "double-clicking" the Sage icon, will actually try to launch it twice, and the Sota.ini will end up in a corrupt state. the .tmp stays in place though, so the fix is easy.

If you have a lot of users logging in on a terminal server, it's hard to control whether they sometimes double click and lock everyone out. So we simply have a Scheduled Task that runs every minute on the server that checks for the SOTA.INI and if it finds it to be corrupt, it fixes it. We set this up by default on most of our Sage installations.

I have attached the PowerShell script, and the <g class="gr_ gr_49 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="49" data-gr-id="49">xml</g> to import it as a Scheduled Task in case anyone is interested. This solution has 100% eliminated this problem for us.
p.s: Modify the paths in the script to match your environment.

Cheers!

------------------------------
George Khairallah
CTO | <g class="gr_ gr_51 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="51" data-gr-id="51">gotomyerp</g>, LLC
george.k@gotomyerp.com | 877-888-5525
http://gotomyerp.com/
------------------------------

This came from Sage in response to this issue that has become multiple calls at Sage recently.

------------------------------
Carmen Cruz
Senior Specialist, Technical Consultant
SWK Technologies Inc.
Carmen.Cruz@SWKTech.com CA
973-437-3984
------------------------------

------Original Message------

This came from Sage in response to this issue that has become multiple calls at Sage recently.

------------------------------
Carmen Cruz
Senior Specialist, Technical Consultant
SWK Technologies Inc.
Carmen.Cruz@SWKTech.com CA
973-437-3984
------------------------------