Controlling System Operations

You use the TAS Manager Console or the TAS Manager Web UI to stop the TAS processes while you perform maintenance tasks that cannot be performed while the system is running, or terminate the processes or reboot the platform to correct a problem with the system. You can also start or restart the TAS manually, if necessary.

How to start the TAS Manager Console
About the TAS Manager Web UI
Many of the activities listed below are also supported by Command Line Interface Commands or the RESTful API - Landslide Home Page TAS Manager API.

Start the TAS

This will start the TAS user interface and test control processes after a Stop or a Terminate.

NOTE: The test servers are recycled whenever the TAS is started.

Select Run > Start from the TAS Console menu or click Start TAS from the TAS Manager Web UI menu. As the TAS starts up, progress messages ("TAS is Starting") are displayed in the console. When you see "TAS is running at PID: xxxx - Fully Started," the start up is complete.
"Maintenance Mode" indication is now possible when the TAS is gracefully shutdown from a Landslide Client, TAS Manager Console, or CLI tasstop command. See additional details below.
Whenever the TAS fails to start, the tasoutput.txt file will be retrieved and displayed in a popup dialog. In addition, "Show TAS Output Log" was added to System menu, that will retrieve and display tasoutput.txt in a popup dialog.
Message-of-the-Day display at login - Additional details provided below.

Stop the TAS

This will terminate the TAS user interface and test control processes in an orderly fashion, disconnecting all client sessions with the TAS and all communication with the test servers. A message is broadcast to any other users on the system that the TAS is immediately shutting down.

WARNING: When the TAS process is stopped, test sessions and test reports that have not been saved will be lost. Before you perform any action that affects the operation of the TAS, check the System Status to see if there are tests running or other users logged in to the system. If there are, use the System Shutdown option to stop the TAS. With this method, you can delay the shutdown for a number of minutes and broadcast a message to all users warning of the shutdown.

Select Run > Stop from the TAS Console menu or click Stop TAS from the TAS Manager Web UI menu. A confirmation dialog will be displayed.
Click Yes, and the shutdown is immediately initiated. Progress messages ("TAS is Shutting Down") are displayed in the console while the shutdown is in process. The console displays "TAS is not running" when the shutdown is complete.

When the TAS is not running you can:

Restart the TAS

This will cycle the TAS through a stop and a start. A message is broadcast to any other users that the TAS is shutting down.

Select Run > Restart from the TAS Console menu or click Restart TAS from the TAS Manager Web UI menu. Progress messages are displayed i("TAS is Starting") in the console. When you see "TAS is running at PID: xxxx - Fully Started," the start up is complete.

NOTE: If tests are running when the restart is requested, a warning is displayed and the restart is not initiated. Use a System Shutdown to urge users to stop testing, and then Start the TAS manually after the shut down is complete.

Terminate the TAS

This will immediately terminate the TAS user interface and test control processes, without any warning to system users and regardless of test activity.

CAUTION: Only use the Terminate option when a Restart or Stop is not effective.

Select Run > Terminate from the menu. A confirmation dialog is displayed.
Click OK, and the TAS is shut down immediately.

Reboot the TAS

This will immediately reboot the TAS platform, without any warning to system users and regardless of test activity.

CAUTION: Only use the Reboot option when a Terminate is not effective.

Select Run > Reboot from the TAS Console menu or click Reboot TAS from the TAS Manager Web UI menu. A confirmation dialog is displayed.
Click OK, and the platform is rebooted. Allow 4-5 minutes before attempting to login again.

TAS Down for Maintenance Indication

When the TAS is gracefully shutdown from a Landslide Client, TAS Manager Console, or CLI tasstop command, a file will be written out to indicate a graceful shutdown. When someone attempts to login to Landslide via the GUI or Tcl API (i.e. a full client application), if the client fails to connect to the TAS, you normally get a "Connection: Refused" type of error from TCP layer. When this happens the client will attempt to retrieve the file from the TAS using the web server (Apache) and if the file is found the Client will display "Unable to connect to the server - TAS indicates it is down for maintenance (TAS not running) error:

This "maintenance mode" indication is only possible while the Test Manager (the box that hosts the TAS Service) itself is up and running, specifically the Apache web service. If you reboot the TAS for any reason (ipcfg, reboot, ES-upgrade, etc), this message may or may not appear at times, since the homepage (Apache) is unreachable, there is no way for this dialog to know what the reason is. The Client will display "Unable to connect to the server - Either down for maintenance (TAS not running) or unable to reach the TAS (Network Issue) error:

From a "RESTful" API, if you fail to connect to the TAS, you can try to determine if a TAS is down for maintenance by querying for "http://TASIP/DownForMaintenance.lck".This is an empty file, so you expect it just to return 200 OK, your browser will display empty page, but not an error page. If you get the 200 OK, that means someone gracefully shutdown the TAS, but the Test Manager is still up and running. As soon as the TAS successfully starts up the "maintenance" flag/file is deleted.

If the TAS dies for some unknown reason or if a user uses the "Terminate" option from TAS Manager Console or "taskill" from CLI, it will not be in "Maintenance Mode".

Message of the Day

To display an optional MOTD file at login:

Login to the test server.
Create /home/cfguser/customer_motd.txt if it doesn’t already exist.
If it exists, skip step 2.
Modify the /home/cfguser/customer_motd.txt file to add text.

The default motd.txt files displays two lines about the Test Server name and version as indicated in the highlighted box below:

Example of a modified motd.txt file as indicated in the highlighted box below: