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I have R8.5 “Standard” loaded all day, every day. If I haven’t used it for a while (say because I’m doing damage control using R6), then I come back, the Notes client window appears normal, in that the icon highlights track the mouse cursor and such. But the moment I do anything, like click the “refresh” area on the Inbox, or try to open a database or its properties, the client simply sits there. And sits. And sits. It often takes so long to do anything that I go off and do something else: get coffee, surf, pick belly button lint.- While it’s sitting, it’s as if the client has crashed. It won’t repaint window sections, it won’t respond to clicks, windoze changes the title bar to include “(not responding)”. It’s as if it’s completely crashed. But it’s not, because it never fails to ultimately come back to life, and it’s not unstable when it does come back to life. It’s simply off twiddling it’s thumbs or something.
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There is zero CPU consumed by the client, zero I/O, zero network bandwidth, zero everything. It’s literally simply sitting there doing absolutely nothing for anywhere from thirty seconds to well over a minute, and far often closer to a minute than not.
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I know a co-worker sees this all the time as well, because I told him on the phone I couldn’t help him until the client decided to respond, and he said he sees it as well.
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It’s bad enough it takes an incredible amount of time to load in the morning, slower than anything but DDE, but randomly taking a full minute to deign to function, all day long, is a slap in the face. Eclipse doesn’t do this. Molasses-slow DDE doesn’t even do this. Why does Notes?
Subject: I have to put something in here so here it goes
I use it everyday and don’t see that kind of problems. Since other guy in your company sees the same problem, it could be something related to both of you.
I would either:
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Clear cache.ndk
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Clear bookmark.nsf (Yes, you will lose your Workspace)
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Disable replication in the locations.
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Run maintenance tasks in the local databases.
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Ultimately, reinstall.
It the first two or three, gets the client normal, then I would start adding your normal applications gradually, so you could understand the problem. Also, FP1 was released a couple of weeks ago.
Hope it helps
Cheers
Subject: Thanks Sebastion!
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I delete cache.ndk regularly, but haven’t since the last time this happened. I’ll try it again.- I didn’t think of this. Losing the workspace is a non-trivial event, given the many dozens of icons I have on it. I’ll see if anything short of reinstall fixes it first.
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Replication is already disabled.
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Didn’t think of this, either. I do this all the time on the server, but not on the client.
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I’d really like to avoid reinstalling. I’ve reinstalled this four times already and I’ve no faith that a fifth one will A) fix the problem or B) not create other problems. But if FP1 is out and I have no choice perhaps I’ll clean install that.
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Thanks again…
Subject: FP1…
- I downloaded this, but it’s not 8.5.1, it’s 8.5.0.1. I’m wondering when 8.5.1 is going to be released? I keep seeing, all over the forum, that things have been “fixed” in 8.5.1, and I’ve seen last February that it’ll be available “in a few months”, yet it’s six, going on seven months later and I’ve seen no updated time frame…
Subject: Re: Clent fails to respond for many do…
A couple thoughts about this chain…
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FP1 is out…but that an entirely different animal than 8.5.1. 8.5.1 is a notable release, while FP1 is just a bunch of fixes piled onto 8.5.0.
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If you have support, open up a call. Just because you can’t produce it upon demand doesn’t mean IBM support won’t have some magical debugging parm that may help track it down when it happens the next time.
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Not knowing anything, what you’re describing sounds like some sort of semaphore problem. The client is patiently waiting (while you are IMpatiently waiting…) for something to transpire. It either times out (networking issue?) or finally comes back and completes. Cranking up some sort of semaphore debugging or opening the console window and watching could be helpful the next time it happens (you could put “Debug_Console=1” in Notes.ini to cause the a console window to appear when you start the client–it may shed light on what craziness it happening in the background).
Subject: I agree it seems like resource contention…
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I did everything Sebastian suggested except delete bookmarks, and full reinstall. No effect. If I have to rebuild my entire workspace from scratch, which will take hours (hundreds of icons organized w/ tabs by project), I may as well do a full reinstall. But Mark has done that and it’s had no effect, so I’m not inclined to squander those hours.
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I’ll try the console deal, and maybe bump the debug level if it lets me, and see what happens.
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I do have support, but this forum tends to lead to solutions or workarounds significantly more effectively, so I don’t tend to use support except as a last resort. But I probably should give them a go, if nothing else than to have another avenue of possible solution.
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Thanks Rob!..
Subject: Clarification
Just wanted to clarify - i did not delete/clear bookmark.nsf nor did I delete desktop8.ndk.
Not sure if I am clear on one issue - are you also using the Admin/Designer client - or just the Standard ‘client’ client?
I, like you, have hundreds of workspace icons that I hate to lose.
On the other hand, i just ran into another issue (trying to create a Corporate Welcome Page ‘the right way’ - and the client version that we’re currently using adds the Welcome Page Database as a local address book to the NOTES.INI ‘Names=names.nsf,welcompg’ line.) And while working on THAT opened my Bookmark.nsf and found hundreds and hundreds of ‘duplicate’ subscriptions created.
As I’m trying to plan an 8.5 rollout, I’m seriously considering deleting EVERYTHING except the user’s ID file and installing 8.5 as a new install.
The contacts should get recreated from the Address Book sync (he says).
I know I’m off the subject now, but with all the changes (Location doc names, install directory names, and all the past sins of bugs that never get cleaned up, replicated local databases that have unread marks that aren’t synced, (the list can go on) it might be best.
Tell you want - I’m going to rename my bookmark.nsf now, and let’s see what happens…
Subject: Another thing
Go to your workspace (Any tab…you will be doing this for all of them)Go get a coffee.
Press F9, then Crtl+Shift+F9.
Drink the coffee.
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Alright, see if there is a slow down in the request to a database. Maybe you have some sort of congestion in the servers.
But yes, it’s hard to go to support if you don’t know how to reproduce it.
If you have enough resources, install vmware server in your machine, and then install the Notes 8.5 there. See if a clean install helps. If you still see the problem well, there is something wrong in your environment.
Another thing, try to clean up your locations, sametime settings, IP address, etc. It could be that it’s trying (for example) to find a server through NetBIOS and you have TCP and so on.
Subject: Krikey!
- I’m such a dolt. I have R8.5 in a VM so I can run two at once, I just don’t load it unless I need it, and that’s pretty much all that’s in that particular VM. I’ll load that up and see what happens. Thanks Sebastian!
Subject: The VM R8.5 does this as well…
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So you’re saying there’s something wrong with my environment. Not sure how that points to that, but “environment” is a pretty broad term. For instance, both the VM and real R8.5 clients are hitting the same server, so it’s part of the “environment”. So is the host OS.- Guess I’ll have to fiddle around some more. Debug like Rob suggested, and maybe capture packets before I attempt to interact with the client to see if it’s waiting for a server response.
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Either way I’m going back to using the real client. Running DDE by itself and trying to open one of dozens of application templates without the icons is a nightmare. (shivver)
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Thanks for your time…
Subject: Sorry…
For environment I always mean the servers =)
If that’s a clean Notes client, and you don’t have many applications it should be something else.
I think I am out of ideas.
Subject: No sorry needed…
- I appreciate your suggestions. I’ll figure it out some day, or I won’t. Bigger fish to fry at present.- Thanks again…
Subject: Is there a solution to this problem?
Sorry to resurrect this post, but i’m experiencing the same issues with 8.5.1. Clients running on XP, Vista and Win7. Something as simple as deleting an email takes 15 seconds at times. Very random.
Subject: Please open a PMR with Support.
The data that is necessary to diagnose the problem is to manually trigger two NSDs. The NSDs will generate NSD files (data\IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT) and javacore files (data\workspace\logs\javacore*.txt).
These diagnostic files will provide insight to what the client is doing at the 2 points in time that they are triggered. It is important to initiate both of them while the delay is occurring at the client.
A NSD can be run by: (You can do this via a BAT file)
Switching to your Notes data directory
Running NSD (no args) from the program directory
Run NSD again
Subject: I have found a possible explanation to delay/hang problems in Notes 8.5.x
I have seen this problem on both Vista and Win7, and I can confirm it is reproduceable on at least 8.5.1 FP1 and 8.5.1 FP2:
Symptom:
The Notes client hangs for a “long” time, 20 sec. and more, with “apparantly” no activity on the client when just opening names.nsf on a server.
How to reproduce this error:
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Restart Windows (Vista or Win7)
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Start Notes 8.5.1 FP2 Standard client/English (This has been testet with 8.5.1 FP1 too)
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Open workspace
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Open names.nsf on server A … no delay
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Close names.nsf … leave the client open (make sure the client does not logout automatically)
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Wait 10 min.
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Open the same databsae - names.nsf on server A
------ DELAY ------
- After the delay the database opens and the client seems to respond fine again.
Doing the same test with Kaspersky antivirus disabled and the delay is gone
Doing the same test with Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0.6 … no delay
(I have seen the same sort of problems with other antivirus programs too, but I cannot confirm on the procedure to reproduce this error)
Subject: I see it, too!
I thought I’d jump in as well.
I see the same thing. Word for word - absolutely no activity of any kind for minutes at a time.
I see this in the Admin/Designer client, although I rarely open either unless I’m trying to preform an Admin or Designer-related task, and close them once I’ve completed.
I’ve installed 8.5 FP1 hoping to solve a myriad of other issues, most, including this issue, have remained.
I will add that, due to troubleshooting another issue, I have PROCMON running. When this ‘Freeze’ occurs, I can confirm that there is absolutely no activity seen by ProcMon - which seems to indicate to me that it’s not waiting for a response of any kind from the server.
This is another issue that one can’t open a PMR with Lotus over, because, unless I can reproduce the issue reliably, we’ll just end up closing the PMR with no resolution.
I’ll also mention that I’ve deleted cache.dsk, pid.nbf, run maint on local databases (fixup, compact -c, and updall), completely uninstalled (and deleted 7.0 and 6.5 remnants) and reinstalled 8.5, installed FP1, and ‘recreated the workspace and cleared the cache’.
The problem just seems to come and go at will…