Terminal Activities 2.1.0 - timeout errors

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1

Since we started using the newest version of Terminal Activities (2.1.0), we have seen tons of timeout errors. We are using BlueZone, and it seems like the first time it tries to interact with the terminal session after moving to a new screen, the terminal session freezes (cursor stops blinking) and the Activity times out. This is not related to a specific Activity - we are having the problem with various Terminal Activities.

2

Hi @postwick,
Could you share some more details with us? Version of Studio, example of error, project example and so on. We would like to check if maybe there is something we could fix.

3

The error is just “Terminal error: Timeout” - happens with any Terminal Activity that interacts with the screen like Get Text, Send Keys, etc. and appears to happen when a new screen loads. Consider the following sequence of events:

  1. open BlueZone and connect
  2. Enter command
  3. New screen loads
  4. Attempt to Get Text from screen, BZ freezes (cursor stops blinking) and the UiPath timeout error occurs

If you put the step 4 Get Text Activity into a Retry Scope, with no condition, retry count of 3, delay of 00:00:02, and a 30 second timeout on the Get Text Activity, it takes time but it does work usually on the Retry’s second attempt. Then any subsequent Activities on that screen work fine, until you do something that causes the mainframe to load a new screen then the first Activity needs to be in a Retry again to get past the initial freeze. None of this happens when interacting with BZ manually.

Our Studio version is 2019.10.3. BlueZone version is 8.1.1.3562 32-bit.

It’s not isolated to one project. It happens on a new project I’m building, and started happening on other projects when they were upgraded to Terminal Activities v2.1.0. Upon downgrading to 2.0.1 it seems the problem is no longer happening but our testing of this is so far somewhat limited.

For compliance reasons I can’t share any code here, but could do a Webex with your technical staff and show them the problem.

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4

Thank you for sharing this. I will push this info to proper team and will let you know.

6

Hi @postwick, sorry for the late reply.

Please send me a DM so we can set up a call for a quick demo.

Thank you
Bogdan

7

any resolution on this? We are having a similar issue with enterprise studio version 2019.10.3 and blue zone v7.1.6.2909 (32-bit)

8

I haven’t been given any resolution. I’ve managed to mitigate it with a retry. The timeout seems to happen when a new screen loads, then it hangs on the first command, keys, get text, etc you try to use on the new screen. What I’ve done is put that first activity on the new screen into a retry - number of retries 3, retry time 5 seconds. Then whatever activity is inside the retry I set to a 30 second timeout. This seems to work, and will get past the initial freeze/timeout.

9

@postwick, I will try to replicate this on my end but it’s not clear which provider you are using for the Terminal Session activity. Is it the BlueZone specific provider or is it the EHLL provider?

Thank you
Bogdan

10

Not really sure. How would I answer that question by looking at my code?

11

When you press the “Configure Connection” button on the Terminal Session, a dialog will open where the first field you will see is the provider type.
Another way is to look for the “ProviderType” key in the JSON strong saved in the Connection String property of the Terminal Session activity. The value next to this key is what is I need.

Thanks
Bogdan

12

Here is the connection string…

{‘AttachExisting’:false,‘ConnectionProtocol’:0,‘ConnectionType’:0,‘EhllBasicMode’:false,‘EhllDll’:null,‘EhllEnhanced’:true,‘EhllFunction’:‘hllapi’,‘EhllSession’:‘A’,‘EnableSSL’:false,‘Host’:null,‘InProcessMode’:false,‘Mode’:1,‘Port’:23,‘Profile’:‘path_to_Bluezone_profile’,‘ProviderType’:3,‘ShowTerminal’:true,‘TerminalType’:0}

13

Thanks. This answers my question. I’ll try to replicate on my end.

Bogdan

14

@Paul, This is a great solution which you have found. Thanks

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