Hi, Martin Norland wrote: MN> I'm afraid phrasing a question multiple ways over a course of days tends MN> not to have much success. In an effort to avoid populating google with MN> just the question, I will give to you what I would try. I understand your point but since I wasn't getting any response and never received a confirmation email from the system telling me that my email account had been verified, I wasn't sure that the original post was actually sent to the community. Oddly enough I got an email from the system this morning asking me to verify my email address - again :s Anyway, at least this time it triggered a response ;) MN> Is it that it's not always available, or that it needs time to 'come MN> back up'. You may want to try running some random low-traffic MN> application over it to make sure it remains running. Some simple SNMP MN> protocol or even simpler just connect to a remote GKrellM. Heck, a ssh MN> connection with top running would do - just something that is constantly MN> transmitting a trickle of data. The VPN connection is not always available. I'm afraid I don't have much control over the VPN myself and I believe only the Oracle port has been opened in this VPN. MN> Essentially, you want ocilogon (complex network function to login to a MN> networked Oracle [in this case] server) to timeout just like fsockopen MN> (fairly simple function to open a socket, including network resources). MN> My suggestion is to try connecting using fsockopen, with the timeout. MN> If it successfully connects - chances are, the majority of the time, MN> your ocilogon that follows will work as well. That's a good idea, I'll try to connect to the Oracle port thru fsockopen. MN> Another dirty little trick you might use is running the ocilogon in a MN> separate script and making use of set_time_limit() to make sure it MN> doesn't run too long. Just be sure not to set_time_limit() for your MN> whole set of scripts, unless you really want them to abort after the 5 MN> or 10 second limit you're setting ocilogon (unlikely). I'm not sure if I can set the time limit (safemode...) but are you saying that set_time_limit only affects the script that you include and not the caller script? I'll try the fsockopen "connection test" on the oracle port. Thanks for your help. Rgds, Jos -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
