topic Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or? in SAS Enterprise Guide

Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

Nietzsche — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 02:56:41 GMT

Hi all,

Yesterday I ran a SAS program in SAS Enterprise Guide that ended up running for a couple of hours. This was my first time working with this dataset, so I didn’t really know how long it was supposed to take, but I was pretty sure it shouldn’t have taken that long.

While it was running, I checked the gear icon in the bottom-right corner of SAS Enterprise Guide, but all it showed was that it was “Running” and the start time—no other details or progress. I eventually cancelled the run, but then the program got stuck on “Stopping.” I had to force-close SAS Enterprise Guide using Task Manager.

After restarting SAS Enterprise Guide, I ran the same program again and it finished in about 16 minutes, so it looks like the first run had stalled or crashed.

For future runs, is there a good way to tell whether a SAS program is actually still running because it’s processing a large dataset, or if it’s become unresponsive or crashed? Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

Ksharp — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 06:33:15 GMT

If your sas was setup under UNIX/Linux OS, you could try command 'DU' or 'DF' to check the disk storage , if it keep decreasing, then your sas is still running.
Or using command 'LS' to check sas session ,if its cpu occupation is not zero ,then your sas is still running .

Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

Kurt_Bremser — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 06:41:35 GMT

You can log on to the server‘s commandline and use the ps command (or the Windows equivalent) to display the process status; by filtering for your username you can find your SAS session.
As admin, I provided a web page which ran such a command and displayed the top 10 processes in terms of CPU consumption, so it was easier for the SAS users to see if they had accidentally created a runaway process.

Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

Kurt_Bremser — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 06:59:40 GMT

ls is for listing files (similar to dir in Windows/DOS); ps is for listing processes.

Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

Ksharp — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 07:12:33 GMT

Kurt,
You are right!

Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

Nietzsche — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:03:14 GMT

oh I found an easy way to tell if (at least for Data Step) if it is still running or not is to check the LCK file is getting larger or not.

Re: Is there a way to determine of a SAS programming running (in EG) or has crashed or?

SASKiwi — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:25:28 GMT

Please note that when using a remote SAS server it can be quite normal to have large variations in run time with the same program and data. This is because you are sharing the server with other users and if it is heavily loaded then program run times can take a lot longer than usual. The way you are monitoring the size of your lck SAS files is a good one.