Enterprise Guide "Freezes" with 25% CPU Utilization

[jimbarbour]

I've repeatedly had problems with SAS Enterprise Guide "Freezing" (i.e. you can't do anything inside the E.G. windows) when I submit a program to run or when I try to use the Log Summary.  This can go on for 10 or more minutes.  Sometimes it will eventually come back and everything will be fine, but other times I have to kill E.G. via the Windows Task Manager. I notice that E.G. is pegged at about 25% CPU utilization when this happens (see screen shot, below), so E.G. is obviously doing something under the covers.  It seems to happen most frequently with larger programs that have a lot of %INCLUDE's in them.

I can still submit via the UNIX command line, but it's kind of a hassle.  Has anyone else experienced this?  Any work-arounds or solutions?

Jim

[ChrisHemedinger]

Hi @jimbarbour -- this shouldn't happen, of course.  I suggest that you take it up with SAS Tech Support.  They will probably ask you to turn on application logging in the EG options -- that log contains information that EG developers might be able to use to see where things are hung up.

Also share information about your specific EG version, and network topology.  Is this EG on your local desktop connecting to a remote SAS...located where?  

[jimbarbour]

Hi, @ChrisHemedinger,  

Thanks.  I'll contact tech support.

I'm running Enterprise Guide 7.15 HF3 installed on a laptop running Windows 7 Enterprise (Build 7601, sp1), 64 bit with 8 Gb RAM and 2.7 GHz clock speed.

On the back end, I'm connecting over a VPN to an 80 lcpu AIX server with 259 Gb RAM with oslevel 7100-03-03-1415 running SAS 9.4 M4 (no, not Viya and not even M5, darn it.)  🙂

Jim

[Kurt_Bremser]

I would not be surprised if the VPN turns out to be the culprit. EG really does not like the latencies caused by the many intermediaries and the geographic distance probably involved.

[jimbarbour]

@Kurt_Bremser,

I too suspected that it might be the VPN, particularly since I was dealing with a fairly lengthy program and even lengthier output, but that turned out not to be the case.  Enterprise Guide continued to "freeze" for lengthy periods of time even when connected the following day to the high speed network in my office at work.

As it turns out, something (unknown) happened to the .egp project file.  The fast solution is to delete the project file, create a new project, and add the programs back in.  Painful on large projects, but it works extremely well.

Jim

[ChrisHemedinger · Accepted solution]

Glad you have a resolution, but the "something happened" shouldn't be so mysterious, right? Maybe the collection of logs gets too large, or ODS output accumulates too much gunk in the project archive.  Spitballing here -- if you're still working with Tech Support, maybe developers can track it down.

[jimbarbour]

Hmm.  I do have logging turned on (the Enterprise Guide logging via log4net).  Perhaps that's getting so large as to be unwieldy?  I probably should turn that off anyway.  It's not needed for every day normal operations.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to replicate the problem.  This isn't the first time it has occurred, so I'll keep an eye out for a recurrence.

Jim

[suchismita]

Hello @jimbarbour ,

I too having similar issue. I ran 3 codes in sequence and they ran successfully .  After that when I tried close to  the code , it asked me saving options yes , no or cancel. Meanwhile  I did a alt+tab to another application, when came back to EG the screen frozen and I could not see that prompt (yes/no/cancel). I tried deleting the project from project recovery location that also did not help. Finally I end up closing EG from task manager.

Anyone have this kind of issue?

[jimbarbour]

Oops. I just marked your question as the solution. Sigh. Fat fingers on my iPhone.

I suspect that the pop up asking if you want to save is still there somewhere and that is why EG appears to be frozen.

My advice would be to not Alt tab away from the pop up. Either save or don't and then Alt tab to another window.

Jim