WWI server issues - winword.exe hanging

[gernotditten]

We have WWI Generation Servers for creating raw reports and Print Request Servers for GLM+ to print Labels.

Soemtimes we face the issue that the WWI Services stop. In most of the cases the reason is that there is a hanging winword.exe process. We set up that the winword.exe process should be deleted after 120 seconds but it seems this doesn't work in all cases. We did a lot of Investigation but couldn't detect the root cause ( I assume it takes longer to identify the root cause because even our temporary files and dump-files from SP42 weren't of much use for the OSS Support). Also Event log and Microsoft Office alerts don't help much. It could be that word is waiting for a user action which can't be performed because it is running under a Service user but this might not always be the root cause.

Unfortunately in the area of GLM this means production has to stop because we have at least to stop and restart all services. For the Generation Server farm this means the number of available services reduces and the Queue might stuck and the users can't create new raw reports.

So we're looking for some answers/workarounds:

1) Anybody else had the same issues? If yes, did you find a solution or at least gvie me a hint

2) If the WWI services stop is it possible to raise an alert in SAP so somebody gets informed (it would save time).

3) I thought it is not possible to run multiple word sessions under the same user. So my idea was to set up a service user for each process (at least on each Server). Is this possible or do the services Need to run under the same user which is defined in the Management Service? Then one hanging word process wouldm not stop the other services from working (Problem esp. on Print Request Servers).

4) Is the timeout to kill the word process after a certain time also valid for print request Servers because the comment in wwi.ini says:

;Used by Generation Server only

; Purpose Kill Worsd after N seconds when Word hangs for some reason

;   Be careful not to kill running Word processes

WordTimeOut=120

So it refers explicitely to Genberation Servers

Best regards,

Gernot

[Former Member]

Gernot, which version of SDS templates are you using to generate reports?  Could you provide a snapshot of job log with error message codes from CG5Z?

[christian_hund]

Dear Mr. Ditten,

please update to latest WWI SP43.

It comes with better crash analysis.

Please open a support incident to analyse the root cause.

Best Regards,

CH

[christoph_bergemann]

Dear Gernot

2) If the WWI services stop is it possible to raise an alert in SAP so somebody gets informed (it would save

time).

TO my knowlegde: with some SAP release/WWI release such function was prepared.  I know that there is a thread discussing this.  Check

C.B.

[Mark-Pfister]

Hello Mr. Ditten,

Gernot Ditten wrote:


1) Anybody else had the same issues? If yes, did you find a solution or at least give me a hint

Lucky not . The last WWI Severs I did set up are up and running for a couple of months now with no issue whatsoever. They are normal WWI Servers for RAW and FINAL Report generation + Synchronous WWI Serves for displaying WWI Reports without a need for a local WWI installation. BUT no GLM / GLM+ is involved nor do we physical print any documents.

2) If the WWI services stop is it possible to raise an alert in SAP so somebody gets informed (it would save time).

One could write a report that periodically checks if the WWI Service is actually responding to a "Test - Server" request as initiated from CG5Z. Setting up a watchdog on Windows site would most likely not work as the wwi process is still running and did not "crash".

 3) I thought it is not possible to run multiple word sessions under the same user. So my idea was to set up a service user for each process (at least on each Server). Is this possible or do the services Need to run under the same user which is defined in the Management Service? Then one hanging word process wouldm not stop the other services from working (Problem esp. on Print Request Servers).

Nowadays it is possible to run mutiple winword.exe processes at the same time. WWI officially doesn't require different users for that.

But that could be a possible issue that has not yet been discovered.

You can run the WWI Services under different users (per "Machine" should be sufficient). Just make sure you have them setup as "real" windows users (and not only service users).

Another solution you could try as workaround is to automatically re-start WWI after n<1000 generation requests. See  1240591 - EH&S WWI: WWI server terminates if errors occur :

By default, the WWI server is now restarted every 1000 or 10000 generations. You can configure this value with the RestartServer parameter in the [Global] section of the WWI.ini file.

In the log, you receive the message "Restart Server after more than 1000 requests" or the message specified in symptom 3 is displayed. Ensure that EhsStart or EH&S management server (EhsManSrv) is configured to monitor the WWI services. To deactivate the automatic restarts, set in the [Global] section of the WWI.INI:

RestartServer=0

4) Is the timeout to kill the word process after a certain time also valid for print request Servers because the comment in wwi.ini says:

;Used by Generation Server only
; Purpose Kill Worsd after N seconds when Word hangs for some reason
;   Be careful not to kill running Word processes
WordTimeOut=120

From what you describe and the comment in the wwi.ini it seems that way.  SAPs

might have more insight...

Gernot Ditten wrote:

Soemtimes we face the issue that the WWI Services stop. In most of the cases the reason is that there is a hanging winword.exe process. We set up that the winword.exe process should be deleted after 120 seconds but it seems this doesn't work in all cases. We did a lot of Investigation but couldn't detect the root cause ( I assume it takes longer to identify the root cause because even our temporary files and dump-files from SP42 weren't of much use for the OSS Support). Also Event log and Microsoft Office alerts don't help much. It could be that word is waiting for a user action which can't be performed because it is running under a Service user but this might not always be the root cause.

Did you try running WWI in console mode (in the DEV or QA environment) to be able to see what is happening?

It is really a pain when WWI Stops working - and you can not reproduce the crash...

Kind Reagrds

Mark