Overview
The MESSAGES.BTR table is used to communicate changes to other terminals signed into System Five. On larger terminal counts the MESSAGES.BTR table can become filled with messages from broadcasts when terminals do not sign in to process their messages. This can negatively impact performance in several areas of System Five.
This file can be refreshed without consequences and good candidates for refresh are MESSAGES.BTR files greater than 500MB.
Customer Symptoms
Very slow sign-in and usage of System Five on-premise or in System Five on Cloud as more and more terminals access the network.
How to refresh the MESSAGES.BTR
- Everyone must be signed out of System Five.
- Create a new temporary folder to relocate the messages files into.
- Move all MESSAGES.* files to the temporary folder location.
- The ZEN database may break this file into segments once past 2G and all MESSAGES files need moving.
- If one file is locked in the above step and unable to move the file move should be aborted and original files placed back into place.
- You may need to restart the Actian Zen database service to ensure all file handles are released. A server reboot should also accomplish this.
- Sign into System Five will extract a new MESSAGES.BTR table.
- Delete the temporary folder location.
Troubleshooting and Points of Note
- Sometimes the MESSAGES.BTR will remain open by the ZEN database engine. You may have to restart the Zen service on the server to have it release the file for replacement.
- The Zen Defragmenter application may also hold files open when everyone is signed out.
- Extraction is expected to work in our System Five on Cloud environment and the Windward Cloud Operations team has monitoring in place to alert our team.
