problem running proutil dbanalys

[rschaer]

Hello All,

I am in the process of migrating our system to new hardware and I am having a problem running proutil dbanalys. The process appears to run but all I get is the banner (from the script) with no other output or results. If I run _proutil directly I get nothing. No errors are displayed. The command works fine on the old system so I think it may be some kind of configuration issue.

System Platform: SUN Solaris 8
Progress Version: 8.3B

Environment Variables:

IDLC=/usrapp/progress/83b
PROEXE=/usrapp/progress/83b/bin/_progres
DLC=/usrapp/progress/83b
IPROMSGS=/usrapp/progress/83b/promsgs
PROTERMCAP=/usrapp/progress/83b/protermcap
PROOIDRV=/usrapp/progress/83b/bin/_prooidv
PROMSGS=/usrapp/progress/83b/promsgs

Command as executed:

proutil gtran -C dbanalys

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

RTS

 

[TomBascom]

Does the process terminate after the banner? Or does it just hang? If it's hanging you might just need to give it time. If it terminates check the exit code and the .lg file for clues.

In any event... Progress version 8??? It's 2007 -- version 8 was old 10 years ago.

 

[rschaer]

Tom,
It actually terminates and gives me back my shell prompt. I also have a version running from cron that
has all night to run and exhibits the same results.

As for Progress 8. We would love to be on V9 or Open Edge but Progress is making that difficult. They
changed the licensing agreement from V83E on that requires profit sharing to the tune of 25% (maybe as
low as 15% but 25% sounds more dramatic) for applications that they deem are "Service Providers". Our
maintenance fees would go from 10-20k/year to hundreds of thousands.

<RANT MODE>
You would think that they would grandfather existing license holders who have been business partners
for 20 years but since they probably are not selling many new licenses they would prefer to screw over
their existing license holders.
</RANT MODE>

Anyway that's why we're still on V8 and slowly migrating to SQL Server .NET. I appreciate the information
and I will check the log file.

Thanks,
RTS

 

[rschaer]

I have some new information. The command works fine when the database is shut down but it will not work while the database is up and running.

 

[TomBascom]

1) I don't recall when but at some point (which I thought was in the v8 timeframe) dbanalys started working against live databases. It simply warns that the results are estimates.

2) The licensing issue should not be intractable. You may, however, need to escalate it. PSC has lately come to realize that policies like the one that you describe are counter-productive and you should be able to work around it with a bit of patience (my turn to rant -- it shouldn't be the customer's responsibility to be patient and teach the sales people how to do their job!)

Someone at PSC should be able to recognize that X% of something is lots better than 25% of nothing...

 

[rschaer]

Tom,

I forgot to mention that the command works fine in the environment from which we are migrating on a live, running database. This leads me to belive that it's some kind of permissions issue that I need to work out. Like maybe it can't access one of the db files or something like that. Once I work through it, I will post my results.

On the other issue, we have had numerous conversations with Progress regarding this issue (over the three years I have been employeed with this company), the most recent attempt was prior to starting this migration in April. I wish you were VP of N.A. Sales. As it is, we have dropped all maintenance and figure that the 1-2 times a year we actually need support, we can send the money the Bravepoint or some other aftermarket shop. $20k saved on maintenance buys a lot of billabel hours at one of these places. The bottom line is that this is a Windows shop that inherited the app from a company they bought. So even if we could get favaorable licensing, Progress is short-lived here.

Thanks for the reply,

RTS

 

[methyl]

Try this syntax.
proutil -C dbanalys -db <database> > logfile.log

Also check that ${PATH} includes ${DLC} and ${DLC}/bin . You may have to set them in the script. To check the interactive environment use unix "env" command. Also write a one-line cron to capture the output of unix "env". The environment in cron is usually sparse.

Don't forget to "export" ${DLC} and ${PATH} because "proutil" is a script and it has default values for ${DLC} which are different from yours.

Use unix command "type proutil" to be sure that you are running ${DLC}/bin/proutil and not something else with the same name.

Actually the symptoms you describe suggest that the database is up single user when you try to run "dbanalys".

 

[rschaer]

Methyl,

Thanks for the information. I wne ahead and re-taced your steps but, as I stated in the initial post, everything is set up correctly. I can actually explictly run the "_proutil" command against the DB and I get back no results. If I run it against a database that has been shut down, I get back results. I'm thinking that it is some kind of permissions issue or possibly that the proutil process can not access the server daemon process.

RTS

 

[rschaer]

New Information:

The server daemons are started using "gtadmin" user. When I start a database server daemon (_mprosrv) as "root" the dbanalys command works. This leads me to believe that a server not started as root is somehow protected proutil can not access it.

 

[TomBascom]

Perhaps the permissions and ownerships have been changed on the executables? Typically proutil is setup thusly:

$ ls -l *proutil*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 257 2006-12-27 13:58 proutil
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 20352 2006-11-29 20:06 _proutil

Note that _proutil is setuid to root.

 

[rschaer]

Tom,

I think this may be it! I did not install Progress from scratch. I copied it from our existing system from which we are mirgrating to insure we run with the same version/ patch level. I will try and reset the permissions. I assume that all "_*" files should carry the same permissions as _proutil. I think the real problem is that the databse server is not running as root.

 

[TomBascom]

Not all _* programs should be setuid. Only _dbagent, _dbutil, _mprosrv, _mprshut, _proapsv, _progres, _proutil and _rfutil.

 

[rschaer]

The last suggestion to set the proper owners and permissions resolved the issue. Somewhere along the line the permissions get changed. Everything is working correctly. Thanks Tom for you help in resolving the issue.