Tuesday Tip: SpectroSERVER shutdown best practices, by Joe Radosta, Senior Support Engineer, 7/18/12
It is recommended that the SpectroSERVER be shut down before shutting down the machine that the SpectroSERVER is running on. However, if the machine that the SpectroSERVER is running on is often rebooted before the SpectroSERVER is shut down you may want to increase the amount of time allowed for processd to shut down to avoid the SpectroSERVER crashing.
SpectroSERVER Shutdown in a Windows Environment
In the Windows environment, processd waits until all sub-processes have shut down before it shuts down completely. However, Windows has a registry setting called WaitToKillServiceTimeout, which is the length of time (in milliseconds) that Windows will wait for all services to stop after a Windows shutdown is initiated. If a service (such as processd) is still running after the amount of time specified by WaitToKillServiceTimeout, Windows terminates this service. Since the default value is only 20 seconds, this may not give the SpectroSERVER enough time to shut down completely when the system is shut down.
To extend this time, perform the following steps:
1. Open the Registry Editor.
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
3. Click the Control key.
4. Double-click the WaitToKillServiceTimeout value in the right pane.
5. In the window that pops up, change the value to anything up to 600,000 milliseconds (10 minutes).
6. Click OK.
7. Restart the Windows machine for the change to take effect.
SpectroSERVER Shutdown in a Solaris Environment
In the Solaris environment, by default, processd waits 20 seconds for all sub-processes to shut down before it shuts down completely. If the SpectroSERVER takes a long time to shut down, processd waits for a longer time before shutting down. You can change the default value using the PROCESSD_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT environmental variable. This variable and its appropriate value (in milliseconds) should be added to the <$SPECROOT>/spectrum60.env file. For example, if you want processd to wait 60 seconds for all sub-processes to shut down, add the following line to the spectrum60.env file:
PROCESSD_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT=60000
Once you have made this entry, you must stop and restart processd for the changes to take effect.