Version

Argent Advanced Technology — All Versions

Date

Monday, 9 September 2013

Summary

The Argent AT services may stop during midnight recycling due to very rare OS-related issue.

Technical Background

When the Argent AT services are stopped, Similar lines may be found in the *_SVC_LOG.TXT files:

18 Aug 2013 00:06:46.128 XXXXX ACME\John.Doe Could not terminate process 'ARGSOFT_AACMAIN.EXE' (Access is denied.)(5).

The actual executable depends on the Argent AT service.

The error is always ‘Access is denied’. According to Microsoft, excluding security permissions, which is not the case here, the error happens if the process to be terminated is stuck in some kernel function call. It is a very rare case, as Argent AT does not explicitly use any undocumented or kernel functions.

The good news is the issue can be corrected by restarting the Argent AT service.

Resolution

To automatically correct such a rare issue, any of following approaches can be implemented:

1. Argent Enterprise is used. It will guarantee self-monitoring of the Argent AT infrastructure. When it cannot connect to the Argent Console port, it will restart the Argent Console service.
2. Argent Non-Stop Monitor is used. One stopped Argent Console motor will not bring down the whole system. More importantly, the running motor will allow Argent Guardian Ultra to fire a system event notifying that the Argent Console motor was down.
3. Use Argent Guardian to do port scanning and restart the Argent Console service if necessary.
4. Upgrade to Argent AT 3.1A-1310-A and above. This release is enhanced to shut down all Argent AT services when encountering such an issue, and a network message will be shown on the desktop.