Instruction manual

SECTION 2. OS/2 OPERATING SYSTEM
2-2
• Sluggish responses to mouse and keyboard.
• Low memory warning on NETADMIN net-
work health screen.
• Real time displays (e.g., strip charts) do not
keep up.
• Status, warning, fault messages indicating
queue overflows.
• DBSelect stop collecting due to insufficient
hard disk space or because the Named
Pipe breaks.
Some suggestions to diagnose and remedy
these kinds of problems:
• Keep plenty of disk space free. OS/2 does
not run well with less than 15+ megabytes
free.
• OS/2 runs best with 8+ megabytes of
memory (RAM). 16 megabytes is desirable.
• Do not run more programs than needed.
Close unused DOS and OS/2 full screens,
programs, folders, and windows.
• The DBSelect status window gives indica-
tions of hard disk space and virtual memory
status.
• The PULSE program (supplied with OS/2)
can be used to check CPU usage. If the
graph indicates complete usage of the
CPU, reduce the number of programs being
run.
• The program on top of the OS/2 Desktop
(the program with the focus) has higher
priority than those running in the
background. Keep the focus on important
programs.
RTMS programs are compiled with priority so
the background module (DLSMGR) task that
communicates with the datalogger has highest
priority. This helps ensure that data will be
available for DBSelect and RTM. When system
resources are taxed, DBSelect and RTM may
not be able to process the data as fast as
DLSMGR collects it. DLSMGR uses buffering
and will keep the data until DBSelect and RTM
can process it, if the heavy demands on the
system resources are temporary. However
when running with a continual lack of system
resources, so RTM and DBSelect cannot keep
up, DLSMGR buffers will eventually overflow
and some collected data will be discarded.
DBSelect will request that this data be
recollected, provided the data is still available in
the datalogger. However, when all of the CPU
resources are being used, long-term operation
is not reliable.
2.3 RESTARTING OS/2
By default, OS/2 automatically starts all
programs that were running when OS/2 was
stopped. This means if the RTMS programs
were running when OS/2 was stopped, they will
automatically restart when OS/2 restarts. This
applies if they are started by double-clicking on
their icons. NetAdmin and DBSelect use
initialization (.ini) files to keep track of their state
and will continue where they were previously
when restarted. RTM will not automatically load
and monitor with a template unless configured
to do so. See Section 6.1.10 for information on
how to do this.