3.3

7 Troubleshooting
100
Wire Problems
This section explains common problems users might encounter with their wire ingests
during daily operation.
Data Receiver
The Avid Data Receiver provides an Administration application that may be used to
troubleshoot most issues related to ingesting wires to iNEWS using a Data Receiver
instance. For more information, see the Avid Data Receiver Installation and Operations
Manual.
If stories are not being sent to iNEWS—that is, the number of stories processed never
increments in the Administration application—ensure raw data logging is enabled and
functioning. If it’s not, check your hardware connection and the Data Receiver
configuration. If some raw data is being logged, but stories are still not being sent to iNEWS,
then check the start/stop sequence configuration for Serial and Telnet input types. Also
ensure file logging is set to ALL and check the log file for parsing errors. This would
indicate a possible problem with parsing NSML, which could make iNEWS reject stories
when Data Receiver attempts to send them.
Locked Blocks
During normal operations the system constantly locks and unlocks blocks on the servers’
hard drive as data is accessed. Occasionally, something may go wrong and a locked block is
left behind.
If you have a persistently locked block, any other process that tries to access the locked
block will wait for the block to become available. The usual scenario for this problem is that
PCs start hanging in the newsroom when users get to a story in a rundown that is in a locked
block. Users then move to another PC, and hang that one too when they access the locked
block story.
If the original locked block is unlocked, then all frozen PCs “unhang.”
To check for a locked block, type the dblock command on all servers. Type dblock several
times in succession and note the block numbers reported. If block numbers are changing,
then the process is not hung up on a locked block. If the block number and process ID
number remain the same through successive dblock commands, then it might be a locked
block situation. If a block remains locked for more than one minute, the system will print a
diagnostic on the console and will repeat the message every minute the block remains
locked. The system will remove block locks owned by processes that have exited.