Wingate becomes inaccessible

[bwedgeworth]

My Wingate server will become inaccessible after a certain period of time. Its not a set time...it varies from day to day. Let me explain.

Ive had Wingate for a couple of years now and it has been running fine. It was initially installed on a Windows XP Pro box, 512MB RAM(in short, plenty of PC for the app). Been working fine for close to two years. Reponse time was good, etc, etc. About 3 weeks ago, people started calling complaining that they were not able to access the internet. I checked the box and sure enough, it was literally locked up. No failure messages, but it seemed like something was running in the background that was taking up all of the PC's processor. I checked the memory and instead of using around 190K, the box was using about 800K. I checked the processes and didnt notice anything out of the ordinary. This box was only used for Wingate, so nothing else was running except for virus scanner(McAfee ver 8). I reset the PC and everything came back up normally. Wingate was working fine, etc. The next day, same problem. PC just become non-responsive. Only way to remedy the problem is to reboot.

Now, PC was not changed in any way. No software added or upgraded. No hardware changes were made. No changes to the windows or wingate settings. It just seemed that out of the blue, the PC started freezing. Since no hardware or software changes were made, I assumed that the problem must be with the PC. I even tried shutting down the virus scanner and any other program that was running, but eventually, PC would freeze.

I moved the Wingate application to a Windows 2000 server a couple of days ago. Got everyones username moved over and reset all of the passwords. By the way, we are using java authentication. The 2000 server is a pentium 4 2.6ghz, with 512MB RAM also. After shutting down old wingate server, I changed the IP on the new server and started it up. Made all of the necessary changes and viola, everyone was able to access it fine. Even had a few people comment on how much faster it was than the old server. I thought the problem was solved. New server ran fine for 2 days until today. Someone called again to say they couldnt access the internet. I went and checked the PC and sure enough, it was frozen. Was able to check the memory usage and over 800K was being used(as opposed to a normal 200K for this PC). Checked processes running and again, nothing unusual. Had to reboot server in order to get application back up and running. Right now, its running fine, but I get the feeling that something else is going on.

Now, things I have checked/done:
1. Stopped virus scanners - still had problem
2. Checked processes for any unusual programs - nothing noticed
3. Have run adaware on computers - no adware or spyware programs detected. Have since removed adaware from running in memory.
4. Defraged hard disks - Did this on both PC's.

Im not sure how much memory Wingate should be using, but I did notice that during this last problem, the wingate.exe process was using in excess of 135K. Since I rebooted the server, I have checked the memory usage by that process and its now using 14K. If anyone can shed any light on this, I would be grateful. Thanks.

Buddy

[MattP]

Gidday Buddy,

Which version of WinGate are you running?

It sounds like you may have a memory leak, do you leave GateKeeper open when you're not on the machine? If yes, could you please close it and see if that helps?

Just on a side note, you said that you transferred everyone over to the new server and reset all of their passwords, did you know that you can just export the registry file to the new machine and retain all of your settings?

[bwedgeworth]

Hello Matt,

On the old PC, I was using Wingate 6.0.3. Since I moved the software to a new machine, I went ahead and upgraded to 6.0.4.

I have closed the Gatekeeper program now, but the first time I noticed the problem on the older PC, the gatekeeper program was not running.

Thanks for the info on the registry file. May come in handy.

By the way, after resetting yesterday, it seems that the engine is running fine right now. I guess the thing that puzzles me most is that the problem just "happened". Nothing was changed on the old PC as far as settings or additional software. Thats why I assumed something was amiss with the PC. Will keep you posted on the status here and if you have anymore suggestions, I would welcome them. Thanks.

Buddy

[labull]

Sounds like it could be the old history file corruption thingy, check here

http://forums.qbik.com/viewtopic.php?t=2834

for a resolution.

[bwedgeworth]

Matt,

Just came in this morning and Wingate was locked again. For whatever reason, the process was using around 183K of memory. Since talking to you previously, I have removed all anti-virus software from this machine and kept the gatekeeper program closed. Whatever the problem is, it doesnt seem to be related to either of those two areas.

Nothing else is running on this machine. As far as the history file corruption....I will check that, but since this is the second machine Ive had this problem on and considering I did a clean install on the second machine and did not move over any files, Im not sure thats the problem either.

Is there any known problem with any Windows hotfixes? My previous machine ran Win XP and the current PC is running 2000 server.

Let me know if you think of anything else.....anybody.....please.

Buddy

[bwedgeworth]

I just checked the topic regarding history file corruption and I dont seem to have any of those systems.

Wingate engine starts fine on my machine.
Gatekeeper loads properly.
CPU percentage never approaches 100%, especially during startup.
History seems to be fine. Havent noticed anything anyway.

My problem seems to be the accumulation of memory usage by the Wingate process over time. Right now, my Wingate process is using 13k of RAM. By tomorrow, it may be using 150k. It seems to take about a day or two before it freezes the PC but there is always a steady increase in the amount of memory the process is using.

[bwedgeworth]

Matt,

I have read through what seems like several hundred posts from other people in this forum that seem to have had the same problem as I, or something very similar. One post suggested enabling the deadlock detection in the advanced options. Do you see a problem with doing this?

I also read through several posts that mentioned DNS loops and ENS memory problems. I do not have a DNS server locally, so I am using my ISP's DNS. I have configured the TCPIP settings on the Wingate server for those DNS's. Nothing in Wingate itself refers to those DNS server addresses and I also have not noticed any sporadic hits on the Wingate server from unusual entries.

Could the memory problem I am having be related in some way to the ENS settings or NAT? Perhaps something in Wingate is not configured correctly. I wouldnt think a machine that would run properly for 2+ years without any siginificant configuration changes would suddenly start having problems, but stranger things have happened. I will be happy to check whatever settings you deem necessary. Thanks.

Buddy

[adrien]

Hi

were any windows hot-fixes applied shortly before you started having this problem?

Regards

Adrien

[bwedgeworth]

Adrien,

Im not sure how about the time frame, but Im sure that some updates were applied to the current Wingate server prior to installing the Wingate application. Since this was a new installation I was trying to make sure that it was as updated as possible.

Now, on the previous PC that Wingate was installed on, no hotfixes had been installed for over 2 years. (I switched the computers that Wingate ran on thinking initially that the problem was a hardware issue)

Both computers are having the same problem in that memory for the Wingate process is increasing steadily until the application freezes. Perhaps freeze is the wrong word. The computer still runs, just very slowly. The Wingate application refuses all connections and the gatekeeper program is inaccessible. If I try to manually stop the engine, I cant. The only solution I have found is to reboot the PC. On my server, the Wingate process typically starts using around 12k of ram. Over time, it increases. When the memory usage for the wingate process reaches approximately 170k it starts refusing connections.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Buddy

[bwedgeworth]

Any other idea's about what may be the problem? Anyone?

Buddy

[Franky]

Hi,

i am very afraid to here that you have the same problem in Version 6 because we got this problem also 6 weeks ago with the version 5.x first time and now it comes up again and again.

We had used wingate also for many years but we got problems like that again and again.. and now we are totally afraid of this software..

Good luck for you maybe you are able to fix the problem..

Best reagards

Franky

[Franky]

Hi,

it seems it is normal to talk with yourself if you got a problem which is not good enough for the Qbik Support.. We done now some test with V 6.0.4 and we got also this memory leak... same like you. As i wrote in a other post i am very afraid of the software quality of Wingate.. in the past and now... i going now on to search a alternative solution and i can recomend you only the same.. we got so many problems in the past and also now.. it is terrible..

Be sure there are some other alternative products.. do a simple google search and you will find them....

Qbik has not used the chance and didn't give me a respond to my other post.. they are simple say nothing if you write something what they didn't like.....

Software Company's are coming and going.. maybe this one will gone for ever in a short while...

[jamesc]

I have a temporary idea Buddy, but I do not know if it is aligned to your needs or SLA's.

You could create a scheduled job to restart the WinGate engine daily at a time when you expect no traffic. The command line is as follows:

cmd /c net stop "qbik wingate engine"
cmd /c net start "qbik wingate engine"

To do this on Windows 2000:

(Windows) Start menu --> Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Scheduled tasks

Go through the wizard, and select the cmd.exe application. When you click finish, select the checkbox as shown in image below



Then add the command line in I showed above, as shown in image below.



Then make another schedule to Start the engine a minute later. Can you also contact us at support via sales@wingate.com and reference this forum post; I would like to ask the team if the debug kit might shed some light on this problem.

[bwedgeworth]

James,

I implemented the scheduled job scenario a couple of weeks ago and the engine appears to work fine now. Since I started this, I have only had one instance where I had to shutdown the engine during the middle of the day because of the memory leak. Obviously, this isnt a solution to the problem, only a temporary fix. I would very much like to know exactly why, all of a sudden(in my view anyway), the engine started having problems. Hopefully the staff at qbik can help me find out why.

Franky, I feel your pain. It is distressing that prior to yesterday my last correspondense with anyone from qbik was on Aug. 18. 3 weeks is a long time to suffer with a problem without any kind of support(free or otherwise). Anyway, I dont begrudge them for that. I'm sure the qbik staff is just as busy as the rest of us and sometimes things get forgotten.

In any event, please keep working at this problem and feel free to email me with any news. b.wedgeworth@3vusa.com Thanks.

[Nev]

Qbik has not used the chance and didn't give me a respond to my other post.. they are simple say nothing if you write something what they didn't like.....

Software Company's are coming and going.. maybe this one will gone for ever in a short while...

Customers 'come and go' and I for one can vouch that Qbik will solve what is probably a 0.001% user issue.

I am sick a tired of people complaining along the way to find a 'scapegoat' for something which is a rare matter or even in my own recent case nothing whatever to do with my work, except that I was the guy who last configured a pc, which later is found to have a 'known MS' defect in some mission critical area!

Solution in my case >> customer gone !

Good nights sleep! :)) Cheers all.

[adrien]

Hi all

Basically if as you say no hardware or software changes happened, then unless there were some automatic changes that you aren't aware of such as

a) Windows update automatically applying a hot-fix (you should be able to tell by looking in the windows update history panel) or
b) Mcafee AV doing some auto-upgrade

then if it isn't one of these, the only thing left would be some sort of network-borne issue. We did have a problem a couple of years back with for instance the Blaster virus causing issues with our driver. This normally didn't show itself as a memory issue in WinGate however.

Is WinGate your border firewall in this case? Do you get a lot of firewall hits?

Also, have you checked any log files in WinGate - do any of these grow more than you would expect every day? This can often point to some issues.

Adrien