Hi Folks,

We're having some trouble removing attachments  from course items on our
blackboard server. Basically, *sometimes* when we try to remove existing
files our blackboard server hangs.

Our system administrator is most concerned with the fact that instances of
the xcopy.exe and cmd.exe processes are failing to close when removing items
from the course documents area of a course.

From a users point of view, the problem manifests by hanging the browser.
When the page is refreshed the file has actually been been removed but, from
what our system administrator has seen,  it looks like the programs
xcopy.exe and cmd.exe fail close at this point. If this happens enough times
we think the resulting memory leak (or something?!) is causing the server to
go down.

Another fact to mention is that this does not happen all the time. For
example, this morning I removed and updated six zip files - the first three
caused this problem while the second three did not. This may suggest that
the problem builds up over time and then finally the server falls over.

We have only noticed this behaviour with zip files attached to course items
which have the special action set to "unpack this file". We have not tried
to recreate this problem under any other circumstance.

I have seen a couple of posts where network issues have been cited as a
possible cause, others point to the temp files that are created being the
problem. Has anyone had any experiences that sound even remotely like this?
We can't tell if this is a bb issue or our own technical problem or a
combination of the two!

Hope this makes some kind of sense to someone! Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

All the best,

Andy.

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Andy Dorman                  TITLE Unit, Computing Services
Web Developer                  +44  (0)1227 767700 ext 2016
Canterbury Christ Church University College [log in to unmask]