I have a customer with an old D3/NT 7.2.1 system running on W2K.

On a nightly basis, this system sends some files via Windows' built-in
FTP client by shelling out to the o/s and running the client against a
script

example: !FTP -s:SendFile.txt

This has worked flawlessly for several years, until last week. Now
when you try to execute the script, you are simply returned to the D3
prompt. No action, no errors.

The big question is "what has changed"?

Of course the claims are that, "nobody has changed anything", but
things just don't change by themselves.

We know the FTP client and script file work fine, as it can be invoked
at the DOS Command Prompt, so all I can think of is a security issue,
preventing D3 from being able to execute the FTP client. Funny enough,
I can still use ! for some commands, such as !DIR <drive>\Path....

I rarely use D3 anymore, so any ideas would be appreciated.

Regards,

--
Kevin Powick

Kevin:

As I always say, upgrade D3 to see if this problem resolves itself. There
is so much that D3NT had problems, outside plain vanilla R83 processing that
it's difficult to speculate what the problem could be. You might try a
complete system restore. You might look at the account the D3 service
starts under. If SP2 for Win XP was installed this could cause permission
problems.

Sorry I couldn't give you the "silver bullet" but these are all the things
that have happened to me over the years using D3NT. Today, however, D3NT is
pretty good and stable, so if you can upgrade to v7.4.x that would help to
eliminate any problems with D3.

Bill

"Kevin Powick" <nospam (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote

Bill H wrote:

Hard to get the client to swallow that idea when the system has worked
fine for years.

It's a W2K machine, as mentioned in my original post.

Thanks for the ideas though. You're the first/only to reply since I
posted the question 2 days ago.

Cheers,

--
Kevin Powick

Stupid question, but can you do the !FTP command from TCL?

Mark


"Kevin Powick" <nospam (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote

Mark Brown wrote:

No such thing as a stupid question Mr. B. :-) No, we can't. It just
comes back to the TCL prompt. No messages, no errors.

--
Kevin Powick

Ok. Didn't you say you COULD run other DOS prompts like !DIR?

What's the TCL item ! look like. It should be

1) vs
2) 17

Mark


"Kevin Powick" <nospam (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote

Mark Brown wrote:

"Could" is now the key word. While !DIR was working yesterday, now I
get nothing. Strange.

Yes, it looks like that.

--
Kevin Powick

Have you tried simply restarting D3, and/or rebooting the server?

Brian Bond wrote:

Yes. Many times.

--
Kevin Powick

One more question and then I'll give up.

If this is D3/NT, how do you have it start? As a service or through a CMD
prompt?

If you have it start as a service, have you tried starting it in a CMD
prompt? The reason I ask is that if "nothing's changed" and it doesn't work
then it might be a permissions thing. If it starts as a service, it starts
in the background as the user you tell it or as the adminstrator. If you
have it set to start in "this account" instead of "Local Sysem Account",
maybe that user no longer has permission?

If you start it in the CMD window, it starts the the local forground user
and should have whatever permissions are active for the currently logged on
W2K user (administrator?). That should cut thru any permissions issue and
at least give you one more thing to try and cross off the list.

Mark


"Kevin Powick" <nospam (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote