Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 09:31:18 -0400
Reply-To: Charles Patridge <Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Charles Patridge <Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET>
Subject: Re: SAS BATCH V8.2 in OpenVMS hanging randomly
To All Parties Concerned,
Based upon some additional feedback from various parties, we implemented
SYNCHIO in our SASCONFIG.cfg late yesterday and our over night jobs
finished successfully (but this has happened before and one night's run
does not mean total success as yet) and will monitor these jobs in the
future for any problems.
Hopefully, this will resolve our problem but will have to wait a week or so
of running our BATCH jobs to see if we encounter any further problems of
this nature.
I hope any party within this email distribution list will find this
resolution a solution to your problem as well.
Thanks to all concerned and will try to keep you posted to our results -
Kind Regards,
Charles Patridge
Corporate Actuarial Planning Unit
The Hartford
Work: 860-547-6644
Email: Charles.Patridge@thehartford.com
PS to Terrie Linker,
We are current with the SAS hot fixes. We will try using SYNCHIO first and
then try CACHESIZE=0 only if SYNCHIO does not resolve our problem on a
consistent basis. Thanks!
===========================================================================
========
Hi Charles,
We have indeed had problems with SAS hanging in 8.2. Upgrading
to 7.3 of OpenVMS probably won't help any. Do try /cachesiz=0,
as well as /synchio. It is my belief that /synchio will make more
difference. Also, are you up to date on SAS 8.2 hot fixes? I will
have to look back, but there may have been a hot fix or two related
to hangs like this.
----
Terrie Linker
VMS/UNIX Development Manager
Terrie.Linker@sas.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Patridge, Charles S (ACTUARIAL, Corporate)
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 8:23 AM
To: 'Carl.Ralston@SAS.com'; 'thacher@sas.com'; 'support@sas.com'
Cc: 'KennethMoody@firsthealth.com'; 'Carey_Smoak@chiron.com'; Rihm,
Dennis M (ACTUARIAL, Corporate)
Subject: SAS BATCH V8.2 in OpenVMS hanging randomly
Importance: High
To: Carl Ralston - Carl.Ralston@SAS.com and Clark Thacher - thacher@sas.com
cc: KennethMoody@firsthealth.com, Carey_Smoak@chiron.com,
Dennis.Rihm@thehartford.com, Peter.Prause@thehartford.com
Subject: SAS BATCH V8.2 in OpenVMS hanging randomly
Dear Carl, Clark and/or SI Technical Support,
Your names were given to me by Kenneth Moody of First Health regarding a
problem with some of our SAS Batch V8.2 programs hanging (not successfully
completing their overnight tasks) in our OpenVMS environment. Ken had
stated he talked with both of you at SUGI 27 and was informed there was a
problem with OpenVMS I/O under a specific version. It was implied that by
upgrading to the newer version of OpenVMS (7.3) or using a work-a-round of
cachesize=0 that the problem could be resolved.
However, after talking with our LAN Administrator (Dennis Rihm) here at The
Hartford, we are still encountering the same condition of some of our batch
SAS V8.2 jobs hanging in our overnight batch jobs. And, we are currently
in the newest release of OpenVMS 7.3. I have not tried using cachesize=0
as yet since I did not know if the above work-a-round was for prior
versions of OpenVMS or not. I suppose I could try the work-a-round but
would like your feedback first.
I was hoping both of you could help us out and assist us in trying to
discover why this is happening with hopes of resolving it completely.
In our situation, our jobs may or may not hang, and if they do hang, it is
not always in the same place (task) - it could be a PROC SQL, a data step,
or a PROC SORT. Frequently, we just submit the same job again and often it
runs and completes its tasks successfully.
Given this is random and not consistent will probably make it more
difficult to understand what is happening and to fix.
Can you please let us know what we need to do to assist you and helping us
correct this problem??? We have documented a number of jobs that have
failed to complete over the past few weeks and very willing to forward them
on to you for analyses but according to the SAS logs, I do not see much
information that would be helpful.
If you need to talk with our LAN Administrator, Dennis Rihm, who is in
charge of our software/hardware installations, his phone number is 860-547-
6770 (his email address is Dennis.Rihm@thehartford.com). He is much more
knowledgeable about what updates and versions we are running than I would
be.
If you need to contact me, my phone number is 860-547-6644.
We would really appreciate your attention to this matter as these
conditions are really impacting our daily production runs in a negative
manner, and our management is becoming concerned with our ability to have a
stable and reliable Executive Management Information System.
I am also including a few correspondence I have received regarding a
request I placed on SAS-L bulletin board yesterday regarding this issue.
It seems there are or have been a few other OpenVMS installations
experiencing similiar conditions as ours.
Thank you in advance. I would appreciate acknowledgement that you have
received our message and look forward to working with you directly.
Regards,
Charles Patridge
Corporate Actuarial Planning Unit
The Hartford
Work: 860-547-6644
Email: Charles.Patridge@prodigy.net
=============================================================
--- Original Message ---
From: "Kenneth Moody" <KennethMoody@firsthealth.com
To: CHARLES_S_PATRIDGE@prodigy.net
Subject: Re: SAS BATCH V8.2 in OpenVMS hanging randomly
Charles,
The folks I talked with at SUGI were:
Clark Thacher, Senior Software Manager UNIX VMS R&D
SAS Institute
919-531-7786
thacher@sas.com
and
Carl Ralston, Senior Member, Technical Staff, BCSG
Compaq
919-531-5905
Carl.Ralston@SAS.com
As you can imagine, we'd like to know how this turns
out for you.
Ken Moody
First Health, Metrics Department
Voice: 916-374-3924
EMail: KennethMoody@firsthealth.com
===============================================================
"Charles Patridge"
<CHARLES_S_PATRIDGE@prodigy.net 07/15/02
12:25PM
Hi Ken,
I checked with our LAN Administrator, and we are
running OpenVMS 7.3, and still encountering these
hanging SAS batch jobs.
Do you remember the SAS person's name you talked with
at SUGI 27, or possibly the OpenVMS tech guy???
Our LAN person would like to pursue but thinks it
best to talk with anyone (over the phone) to discuss
details instead of emails (I agree).
Thanks for any info you can provide.
===============================================================
--- Original Message ---
From: "Kenneth Moody" <KennethMoody@firsthealth.com
To: Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET
Subject: Re: SAS BATCH V8.2 in OpenVMS hanging randomly
Charles,
We've had similar problems running SAS 8.2 in batch
on OpenVMS 7.2. According to SAS Instititute and to the Compaq
support person who was at SUGI 27 there is a bug in OpenVMS I/O routines
which
causes this. The best fix is to upgrade OpenVMS to a more current
release (I believe that there is a 7.2-1, 7.2-2 and a 7.3 available now).
A SAS circumvention is to set cachesize=0.
If you'd like more detail let me know and I may be able to find it.
(We had to clean out our desks and cubes a couple of
weeks ago when new carpet was installed and I'm now finding out the
value of some of the stuff that I discarded. :) )
HTH
Ken Moody
First Health, Metrics Department
Voice: 916-374-3924
EMail: KennethMoody@firsthealth.com
================================================================
"Charles Patridge"
<Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET 07/15/02 05:33AM
SAS BATCH V8.2 in OpenVMS hanging randomly
To SAS-Lers,
I believe someone from Westat responded to this problem a while back
and was wondering if anyone else has exprienced the same situation, and if
you found the cause.
Some of our SAS jobs are hanging in our batch queues overnight never
to finish until we kill the job. It seems to happen randomly and in
different places in our jobs.
Typically, we can re-submit and the job will complete without a problem
but it would be nice to know what is causing the problem so we can assure
ourselves the job will finish without a gliche.
If anyone has encountered the problem, I would like to hear from you to
compare notes and see if we can resolve the condition(s) that are causing
this.
Thanks for any help.
Regards,
Charles Patridge
The Hartford
Email: Charles.Patridge@thehartford.com
Phone: 860-547-6644
===========================================================================
===
Hi Charles,
We are having the same problem here at Chiron Corporation (in California).
So far we have not found a solution. It seems, however, that the problem is
occurring when PROC SQL is run. We have recently gone through a transition
from SAS 6.12 to SAS 8.2. In SAS 6.12, we did not experience any problems.
With kind regards,
Mr. Carey G. Smoak
Bioanalyst
Chiron Corporation
Smoak, Carey [Carey_Smoak@chiron.com]
===========================================================================
=
Charles Patridge
Corporate Actuarial Planning Unit
The Hartford
HO-GL-140
Hartford Plaza
Hartford, CT 06115
Phone: 860-547-6644
Email: Charles.Patridge@thehartford.com
