VFAQ - Very Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated 29 August 2001

Unauthorised loan

There are several reasons why you could be getting this message. In essence it means that the lending rules that you have specified do not permit the item to be loaned to this borrower. Early in the year the most common reasons are:

Other reasons are:

  Alice OASIS
How to Generate the Calendar Circulation, File, Calendar, Generate B2/F1, Generate
Where to find Borrower Loan Category Circulation, File, Borrower Loan Category B2/D2, Loans

This is such a common question, particularly at the start of the year, that an option has been added to OASIS Library Extras to check the circulation parameters and tell you exactly what is wrong. Download the latest OASIS Library Extras, install it and select option H4 - Check Circulation.

DOS error 4 - Out of file handles

See here for full details.

AFW Crashes with 'Files Remain Open' during operation after upgrade from OASIS

I upgraded to AfW from OASIS (Catholic Version) but Alice frequently crashes giving a 'Files Remain open' error screen. The upgrade appeared to work properly. What is wrong?

Option 1

There is a known problem when upgrading from early versions of OASIS (Softlink version 3.11 and earlier) directly to AfW. Re-applying the upgrade seems to fix the problem in most cases.

Option 2

File corruption in the OASIS data files. Serious file corruption will cause the AfW update to crash and you will not even get to install Alice.

More subtle file corruption, however, may slip through unremarked on during the update until AW tries to operate live.

File corruptions come in three main forms:

  1. Blank records in the file. This is normally caused by 'Add Errors' during an OASIS recovery that have been ignored.
  2. Garbage in the file. A bad network card or hub can cause this.
  3. Record slippage. The actual data is offset by one or several caharacter positoins from where it is meant to be in the file.

Garbage and record slippage will usually be sufficiently serious that the update will fail. Blank records commonly cause failure after the update.

There are around 190 data files in the LOASIS directory and it is not practical to use DBU to scan through each file. Even if you did you would proably miss some corruptions.

Softlink wrote a utility program CHECKDB.EXE which will check all data files at once and report on apparent corruptions. CHECKDB has several options and, with AfW format files, occasionally reports data as a problem that is in fact OK. It also has an option to FIX corruptions by replacing the corruption with spaces. I prefer to use DBU to hand craft the corrections. For OASIS version 2 systems, use the /311 switch.

Example: Log to the \OASIS\LOASIS directory, CHECKDB *.D /311. A logfile CHECKDB.OUT will be written to the disk and can be printed. If a file has more than 20 errors, the listing for that file will be stopped. Fix those errors and then re-run CHECKDB.

checking LAUTCAT.D

Slippage detected : 0 :
Record 14065 :

Slippage detected : 0 :
Record 14066 :

Slippage detected : 0 :
Record 14067 :

Slippage detected : 0 :
Record 14068 :

checking LAUTHOR.D

Record 7209 : VAN024Van Gool-LefŠvre-Loiseaux L 19960612

Record 7398 :
Sample of CHECKDB output

In this example, the 'slippage detected' is actually Blank records. LAUTHOR.D file record 7209 is OK. CHECKDB is wary of the accented 'S' in the author's surname.

Examine each of the files where corruptions are reported using DBU. [F7], Goto, Record number, will position immediately to the record number listed in CHECKDB.OUT. To fix the various types of corruption:

Blank records or Garbage in the file. Delete the record <Del> key, and Pack the file [F6], Pack, Yes. DO NOT Pack LBIBRES.D in OASIS version 2. It is OK to pack this file in AfW

Record Slippage. If only a few records have been affected, it is usually easiest to locate the record in DBU and type each field by hand. If a large area is affected, Norton's File Fix has an option to slide the data of the slipped records back into line again.

ALWAYS REBUILD INDEXES AND FORCE A DATA ARCHIVE OR MAKE AND EXTERNAL BACKUP AFTER ANY MODIFICATIONS TO DATA FILES USING DBU. If you do not, a subsequent system recovery may undo all the changes you have made.

AFW 5.40 is VERY slow to load

I upgraded to AfW 5.40 and now it takes over 30 minutes to start Inquiry (AFWOPAC).

The problem occurs when Windows NT or Windows 2000 workstations are being used.

Windows 95 (and presumably Windows 98 although this was not tested) do not exhibit the problem.

AfW Inquiry (AFWOPAC.EXE) reads around 210Mb of data from the server and then gets on with the business of running Inquiry. This generates heavy network traffic and on 10MHz networks takes a fair time to complete and accounts for the startup delay observed.

Workaround

Rename the file AFWLANG.DEF which is located in the base AfW installation directory to AFWLANG.OLD.

A permanent fix will be released by Softlink in due course.

Note: Softlink advise that all clients with performance problems should contact their support specialist and do not recommend that clients modify their AfW installation except on specific instruction.

OASIS Admin Extras - Print to screen won't work with new computer

One of my school's bursars has just got a new machine and this afternoon when she was generating some reports in OASIS Admin Extras and printing them to SCREEN it was either throwing the text all out of proportion or not showing the report but a blue screen with red bands at the top and bottom. If she prints it to the printer it is fine however, she is unable to view the report on the screen. The other reports through the finance modules are fine.

OASIS Admin Extras (and Library Extras and anything else I write in Clipper) has a problem with some computers and their video cards for print to screen. When displaying a wide report (i.e. wider than 80 characters) it attempts to switch the video card into 132 column mode for a nicer display. Sometimes this works, sometimes it crashes windows. The more recent versions of the program(s) from version 91121 onwards handle the issue by disabling the 132 column mode switch for a given OASIS operator (i.e. password) on a given station (i.e. network card Physical Station Number) if the program fails to return from the 132 column screen display, presumably because it has crashed windows. If using an older version, download the latest one from http\://www.oasisextras.com.au/AdminExtras.htm and after the first crash the problem should be solved.

Some computers will simply display a blank screen and NOT actually crash the window. In this case the adaptive process described above will not identify that a problem exists. If you define an environment variable WIN95=Y, this will totally disable the 132 column mode switch.

Loan Limits in OASIS

Two primary schools are having problems with the limits on the number of books students' can borrow. Even though they have gone in and set the borrowing parameters at 3 fiction and 3 non - fiction, OASIS only allows students to borrow a max of 3 books and then says that the max fiction books borrowed has been reached. The librarians are having to override the message. This happens if a student has 1 fiction, 2 non - fiction and you go to give them another fiction book or non - fiction book. Any ideas where we can check the settings for fiction and non fiction?

Borrower loan limits are stored against each borrower in the borrower record. Check a specific student's record in B2/A1 and see what it says there. It is a common misconception that loan limits are enforced globally. The global change option for loan limits actually changes the loan limits individually for each borrower in the specified group. See what it says on the loans screen that the loan limits actually are for the borrower.

If that doesn't work, try rebuilding the indexes. In fact 'try rebuilding the indexes' is always the first thing to try irrespective.

Unrecoverable Error 416 read error on overlay file

'Unrecoverable error 416. Read Error on overlay file' means connection with the fileserver has been lost. An OASIS module is generally much larger than conventional memory and loads sections of the program into memory as required. When it has attempted to load another chunk from the Overlay File it could not do so. Invariably this error means a network failure of some kind. Cabling, hub, fileserver crashed.

OASIS constantly requests a backup

The hard disk on which OASIS is installed is larger than 2Gb. The size of the hard disk is reported incorrectly to OASIS and triggers the request for a backup. Two solutions exist:

  1. Install OASIS on a partition or volume smaller than 2Gb.
  2. On a Netware server, implement hard disk space limitations for the volume where OASIS is installed for all users of OASIS such that the maximum accessible space is less than 2Gb.

Calendar needs to be Generated

OASIS Library, OASIS Admin and AfW all require the calendar to include all dates that they have to process. This message means that you need to create the calendar for the current year.