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I just e-mailed support with the same subject line. I'm looking forward to trying the patch.

We have a MultiTech MultiModem Cell cellular modem connected to the Verizon network. We have frequently seen dropped and duplicate messages that have been sent out on this modem via PageGate. This was most likely to occur when sending a large message that had to be "chunked" into smaller messages (1 of 2, 2 of 2) by PageGate or in high volume usage.

To diagnose the problem, we researched the AT command set specific to this modem. We discovered the following in the documentation for the AT+CMGS instruction:

"It is recommended that +CDS: unsolicited messages are enabled using the AT+CNMI command. +CDS: indicates that the message has been received by the network and the network is delivering the SMS or there is an error in attempting to send the SMS. Attempting to send a second SMS prior to the +CDS: unsolicited message will result in an error."

We wrote a short utility program that talks to the modem directly. It sends 5 messages to the modem. In between messages, it always waits for the "OK" from the +CMGS call, then either waits for +CDS or delays a specified number of seconds. When we call AT+CNMI and wait for the CDS notification in our program, we have never lost a message or gotten duplicates. When we don't wait for CDS, but instead delay, we have no guarantee of success, and have had errors with delays of 3 seconds during high volume times.

It seems that +CNMI isn't a standard part of GSM AT - at least, it returns an error when we try to run it against our T-Mobile modem - and so I'm guessing that PageGate isn't using it or checking for the CDS notification. However, not having it is starting to cost us customers because of missed messages.

Would it be possible to get a patch for this? We are running PageGate 6.

Thanks.

The problem was that we had exceeded our licensed number of users (10,000).

The adhoc recips are the last in our list, so the ones in excess of our license were unable to have GetAscii interface enabled. This is why some of them worked (the ones below the 10k limit) and some failed.

So, i just need to delete some of our many unused non-adhoc recips, and then enable GetAscii for all adhoc recips.

Thanks much to Aaron Osgood and Jeremy at Notepage Tech Support for the assist!

-Brian

I'm using PGServer 5 and having a problem with adhoc paging via GetAscii; GetAscii is rejecting messages to some adhoc recips outright, and i cannot figure out why.

This started last week; we had pages failing for the adhoc recip for us_mobility_snpp. Noone bothered to look at the log so my people assumed the carrier was having trouble, and they started changing our users from the us_mobility_snpp to the us_mo_wctp (still adhoc).

This worked fine for a day, then suddenly the us_mo_wctp started failing too. I'm quite sure noone edited the adhoc user itself or the carrier in question. I'm also sure the ASC files being generated are consistent, as i've tested creating text files by hand and dropping them into the polling directory.

Now they've started changing our users to a metrocall_wctp adhoc recip, and so far it's working. However i looked at the log and found that the carrier was never being attempted for those failures, it appeared rather that GetAscii was failing to parse those ASC files correctly. So i'm concerned that it will continue to happen.

Normally in the GetAscii log when an adhoc message is accepted it looks like this:
8/4/2010 10:05:46 AM Message accepted. Recipient: adhoc_metrocall_wctp-1234567890 from: sender@mydomain.com
with adhoc_metrocall_wctp of course being the adhoc user assigned to the Metrocall_WCTP carrier, and 1234657890 being the ID/PIN.

Now with some adhoc users, i'm getting this instead:
8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Message rejected. Recipient: adhoc_usmobwctp from: sender@mydomain.com. Source: C:\PageGatePolling\bad\315331.754
8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Not a valid recipient
8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Message rejected. Recipient: 1234567890 from: sender@mydomain.com. Source: C:\PageGatePolling\bad\315331.754
8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Not a valid recipient
8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM No valid recipients in message. From: tsender@mydomain.com. Source: C:\PageGatePolling\bad\315331.754
8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM No valid recipients in message
...

For anyone else doing this, here's the short version of what i learned:

After creating and modifying your tables in SQL, the 'tty_service' field in users table needs Default Value of 0.

If you're going to run pagegate as a service, use Sql Server Authentication (instead of Windows NT Authentication) when setting up your odbc data source. Either can work for application mode.

When selecting which tables to link in access, if you're using sql authentication in your data source, don't forget to check the 'remember password' box in the lower right corner.

Update: it DOES work using the SQL data when i switch it back to application made instead of service mode, so it seems to only have a problem starting when its a service.

When i configured it to run as a service, i just clicked "Apply" without specifying an account (to use local system account, as it always did before). But now it's doing more than talking to a local MDB...

I guessed permissions issue; "local system" can't access the sql data because i configured the DSN to use windows authentication. I created a sql authentication user on the sql server and gave it dbowner over the pagegate db, then changed the DSN to use that sql login instead of windows auth.

This still didnt fix my problem (even refreshed the linked tables in access).

Next i tried to tell it to use a different account (my own) via PGadmin (switched to app, then back to service to get account prompt).

Had a little trouble at first, (i had to grant my domain login the local rights to run as a service) but then i was able to get the main pagegate service to use my account instead of local system. Now it's working again in service mode.

EDIT: i am still not sure this is the best fix... i now have to go through and changing the account for each dialer/interface service also as they are hung...

EDIT2: better fix; went back to the DSN idea and re-linked my tables in access using the modified DSN, and now it can run regardless of service account, using a sql login instead of nt auth (IOW linked-table refresh doesnt cut it; if you changed the DSN, re-create the linked tables).

I've been playing around with the SQL integration with v5 on and off for a few days, and it was working fine, but i broke something somehow.

I cant get it to start at all now while using the SQL linked mdb, but as soon as i swap in the plain old mdb with data in it it starts working fine again.

Symptom would seem to indicate a prob with SQL tables config i guess, but i didnt change anything there since i had it working, that i know of.

Well, I blew away the tables in SQL, and started the process again from the beginning. I imported from access and made the column modifications by hand as before. In access I linked to the sql tables via odbc and tested ability to read/write from there successfully.

But i'm still getting a hang at start. In the PGMonitor for PGServer i get just:
<datetime> Module Started
but it never actually starts.

I think the last thing i changed before it broke was to make PG run as a service instead of an app, but changing it back doesnt seem to help now.

Any advice?

tty_service is a bit (true/false) field, so an empty string wouldn't be good either, but that's moot because i don't see how i can change what PGAdmin is sending.

I added a user via PGAdmin, and it's passing a null for tty_service in the insert. Not sure how i can change that behavior (not even really sure what tty_service is for; i dont have any field for editing it on the user i'm adding).

EDIT: ok came up with a better solution: I set that field's Default Value to 0, and made it non-nullable. Just tested and it works.

Well i got it partially working on V4; i could open PGadmin and view data, and even delete recipients etc.

I did get some errors when trying to add/update. They were somewhat vague (3146 ODBC call failed in add_user command1).

My data connection was fine and permissions wern't an issue (i am dbo), or i wouldn't be able to delete. My guess was that maybe a datatype was wrong somewhere.

I downloaded the trial for v5 and started fresh. I followed the same process, though i had to go back and add the audit table, but then everything looked good again. Got the server running, and was able to view data via PGAdmin.

Again i got that error 3146 when i tried to add a new user, but it was more specific this time and told me "Cannot insert value NULL into column 'tty_service'". So I made tty_service nullable, and the insert succeeded.

My guess is it was probably the same issue in v4, and changing the same field to nullable would make it work, but i blew away v4 on my test machine completely and I'm too lazy to go back to test that. =)

I'll do some messing around on a test machine, and I'll let you all know if i get it to work in 4.

If I'm understanding that process, Pagegate is still using MSAccess as far as it knows, but the MBD doesnt have any data in it, rather it's all linked tables, and your data is actually in SQL.

Is there any reason that same process wouldnt work in v4? Not that we're against upgrading to 5 (it's on our todo list) but this is just a more immediate issue Ive been tasked with resolving asap.

SQL integration, I like the sound of that.

Is that new in v5, and can you point me to more info on it?

We're using v4 of Pagegate server.

We have a web app that allows customers to update their contact info in our (non-pagegate) database. Home phone, cell, etc, but also including their pager number.

Occasionally a customer will update their pager number, but naturally this doesnt change pagegate for them, so unless they also call us and get one of our staff to update that, their change doesnt go into effect.

We are considering several solutions:one is simply alerting our staff with an email when a customer makes an update to a pager contact, but another is to allow our web app users to update pagegate's database directly.

I've written a few apps that query Pagegate's MDB directly, returning all users with emailto addresses that partially or completely match a user input string, for instance. Selecting data has not been an issue at all, those apps work fine.

I'm just worried that inserting into/updating (rather than just selecting from) the live database might cause some concurrency issues. I'm talking about inserting a single recipient mostly, and possibly editing an existing one also.

Has anyone else has made their own app that updates pagegate directly?

We did a full reload of the OS and a new pagegate install, and after wrangling with DEP, we got pgmailserver service running and the popclient is popping the mailbox now.

It is indeed, as is PGMailService (PGMailServer.exe).

Author	Message
Topic: MultiTech MultiModem Cell on Verizon
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 8955	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 11:31 am Subject: MultiTech MultiModem Cell on Verizon
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 8955	I just e-mailed support with the same subject line. I'm looking forward to trying the patch.
Topic: MultiTech MultiModem Cell on Verizon
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 8955	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 10:40 am Subject: MultiTech MultiModem Cell on Verizon
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 8955	We have a MultiTech MultiModem Cell cellular modem connected to the Verizon network. We have frequently seen dropped and duplicate messages that have been sent out on this modem via PageGate. This was most likely to occur when sending a large message that had to be "chunked" into smaller messages (1 of 2, 2 of 2) by PageGate or in high volume usage. To diagnose the problem, we researched the AT command set specific to this modem. We discovered the following in the documentation for the AT+CMGS instruction: "It is recommended that +CDS: unsolicited messages are enabled using the AT+CNMI command. +CDS: indicates that the message has been received by the network and the network is delivering the SMS or there is an error in attempting to send the SMS. Attempting to send a second SMS prior to the +CDS: unsolicited message will result in an error." We wrote a short utility program that talks to the modem directly. It sends 5 messages to the modem. In between messages, it always waits for the "OK" from the +CMGS call, then either waits for +CDS or delays a specified number of seconds. When we call AT+CNMI and wait for the CDS notification in our program, we have never lost a message or gotten duplicates. When we don't wait for CDS, but instead delay, we have no guarantee of success, and have had errors with delays of 3 seconds during high volume times. It seems that +CNMI isn't a standard part of GSM AT - at least, it returns an error when we try to run it against our T-Mobile modem - and so I'm guessing that PageGate isn't using it or checking for the CDS notification. However, not having it is starting to cost us customers because of missed messages. Would it be possible to get a patch for this? We are running PageGate 6. Thanks.
Topic: AdHoc msgs rejected by GetAscii (sometimes)
Brian.Turner Replies: 1 Views: 5945	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:05 pm Subject: resolved
Brian.Turner Replies: 1 Views: 5945	The problem was that we had exceeded our licensed number of users (10,000). The adhoc recips are the last in our list, so the ones in excess of our license were unable to have GetAscii interface enabled. This is why some of them worked (the ones below the 10k limit) and some failed. So, i just need to delete some of our many unused non-adhoc recips, and then enable GetAscii for all adhoc recips. Thanks much to Aaron Osgood and Jeremy at Notepage Tech Support for the assist! -Brian
Topic: AdHoc msgs rejected by GetAscii (sometimes)
Brian.Turner Replies: 1 Views: 5945	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 10:51 am Subject: AdHoc msgs rejected by GetAscii (sometimes)
Brian.Turner Replies: 1 Views: 5945	I'm using PGServer 5 and having a problem with adhoc paging via GetAscii; GetAscii is rejecting messages to some adhoc recips outright, and i cannot figure out why. This started last week; we had pages failing for the adhoc recip for us_mobility_snpp. Noone bothered to look at the log so my people assumed the carrier was having trouble, and they started changing our users from the us_mobility_snpp to the us_mo_wctp (still adhoc). This worked fine for a day, then suddenly the us_mo_wctp started failing too. I'm quite sure noone edited the adhoc user itself or the carrier in question. I'm also sure the ASC files being generated are consistent, as i've tested creating text files by hand and dropping them into the polling directory. Now they've started changing our users to a metrocall_wctp adhoc recip, and so far it's working. However i looked at the log and found that the carrier was never being attempted for those failures, it appeared rather that GetAscii was failing to parse those ASC files correctly. So i'm concerned that it will continue to happen. Normally in the GetAscii log when an adhoc message is accepted it looks like this: 8/4/2010 10:05:46 AM Message accepted. Recipient: adhoc_metrocall_wctp-1234567890 from: sender@mydomain.com with adhoc_metrocall_wctp of course being the adhoc user assigned to the Metrocall_WCTP carrier, and 1234657890 being the ID/PIN. Now with some adhoc users, i'm getting this instead: 8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Message rejected. Recipient: adhoc_usmobwctp from: sender@mydomain.com. Source: C:\PageGatePolling\bad\315331.754 8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Not a valid recipient 8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Message rejected. Recipient: 1234567890 from: sender@mydomain.com. Source: C:\PageGatePolling\bad\315331.754 8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM Not a valid recipient 8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM No valid recipients in message. From: tsender@mydomain.com. Source: C:\PageGatePolling\bad\315331.754 8/4/2010 10:05:56 AM No valid recipients in message ...
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:30 pm Subject: Short version
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	For anyone else doing this, here's the short version of what i learned: After creating and modifying your tables in SQL, the 'tty_service' field in users table needs Default Value of 0. If you're going to run pagegate as a service, use Sql Server Authentication (instead of Windows NT Authentication) when setting up your odbc data source. Either can work for application mode. When selecting which tables to link in access, if you're using sql authentication in your data source, don't forget to check the 'remember password' box in the lower right corner.
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:59 pm Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Update: it DOES work using the SQL data when i switch it back to application made instead of service mode, so it seems to only have a problem starting when its a service. When i configured it to run as a service, i just clicked "Apply" without specifying an account (to use local system account, as it always did before). But now it's doing more than talking to a local MDB... I guessed permissions issue; "local system" can't access the sql data because i configured the DSN to use windows authentication. I created a sql authentication user on the sql server and gave it dbowner over the pagegate db, then changed the DSN to use that sql login instead of windows auth. This still didnt fix my problem (even refreshed the linked tables in access). Next i tried to tell it to use a different account (my own) via PGadmin (switched to app, then back to service to get account prompt). Had a little trouble at first, (i had to grant my domain login the local rights to run as a service) but then i was able to get the main pagegate service to use my account instead of local system. Now it's working again in service mode. EDIT: i am still not sure this is the best fix... i now have to go through and changing the account for each dialer/interface service also as they are hung... EDIT2: better fix; went back to the DSN idea and re-linked my tables in access using the modified DSN, and now it can run regardless of service account, using a sql login instead of nt auth (IOW linked-table refresh doesnt cut it; if you changed the DSN, re-create the linked tables).
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:34 pm Subject: SQL integration
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	I've been playing around with the SQL integration with v5 on and off for a few days, and it was working fine, but i broke something somehow. I cant get it to start at all now while using the SQL linked mdb, but as soon as i swap in the plain old mdb with data in it it starts working fine again. Symptom would seem to indicate a prob with SQL tables config i guess, but i didnt change anything there since i had it working, that i know of. Well, I blew away the tables in SQL, and started the process again from the beginning. I imported from access and made the column modifications by hand as before. In access I linked to the sql tables via odbc and tested ability to read/write from there successfully. But i'm still getting a hang at start. In the PGMonitor for PGServer i get just: <datetime> Module Started but it never actually starts. I think the last thing i changed before it broke was to make PG run as a service instead of an app, but changing it back doesnt seem to help now. Any advice?
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:53 pm Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	tty_service is a bit (true/false) field, so an empty string wouldn't be good either, but that's moot because i don't see how i can change what PGAdmin is sending. I added a user via PGAdmin, and it's passing a null for tty_service in the insert. Not sure how i can change that behavior (not even really sure what tty_service is for; i dont have any field for editing it on the user i'm adding). EDIT: ok came up with a better solution: I set that field's Default Value to 0, and made it non-nullable. Just tested and it works.
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:31 pm Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Well i got it partially working on V4; i could open PGadmin and view data, and even delete recipients etc. I did get some errors when trying to add/update. They were somewhat vague (3146 ODBC call failed in add_user command1). My data connection was fine and permissions wern't an issue (i am dbo), or i wouldn't be able to delete. My guess was that maybe a datatype was wrong somewhere. I downloaded the trial for v5 and started fresh. I followed the same process, though i had to go back and add the audit table, but then everything looked good again. Got the server running, and was able to view data via PGAdmin. Again i got that error 3146 when i tried to add a new user, but it was more specific this time and told me "Cannot insert value NULL into column 'tty_service'". So I made tty_service nullable, and the insert succeeded. My guess is it was probably the same issue in v4, and changing the same field to nullable would make it work, but i blew away v4 on my test machine completely and I'm too lazy to go back to test that. =)
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:53 am Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	I'll do some messing around on a test machine, and I'll let you all know if i get it to work in 4.
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:38 am Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	If I'm understanding that process, Pagegate is still using MSAccess as far as it knows, but the MBD doesnt have any data in it, rather it's all linked tables, and your data is actually in SQL. Is there any reason that same process wouldnt work in v4? Not that we're against upgrading to 5 (it's on our todo list) but this is just a more immediate issue Ive been tasked with resolving asap.
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:15 am Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	SQL integration, I like the sound of that. Is that new in v5, and can you point me to more info on it?
Topic: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 5:00 pm Subject: Adding recipients programmatically from outside Pagegate
Brian.Turner Replies: 14 Views: 40062	We're using v4 of Pagegate server. We have a web app that allows customers to update their contact info in our (non-pagegate) database. Home phone, cell, etc, but also including their pager number. Occasionally a customer will update their pager number, but naturally this doesnt change pagegate for them, so unless they also call us and get one of our staff to update that, their change doesnt go into effect. We are considering several solutions:one is simply alerting our staff with an email when a customer makes an update to a pager contact, but another is to allow our web app users to update pagegate's database directly. I've written a few apps that query Pagegate's MDB directly, returning all users with emailto addresses that partially or completely match a user input string, for instance. Selecting data has not been an issue at all, those apps work fine. I'm just worried that inserting into/updating (rather than just selecting from) the live database might cause some concurrency issues. I'm talking about inserting a single recipient mostly, and possibly editing an existing one also. Has anyone else has made their own app that updates pagegate directly?
Topic: POPClient not popping
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 12647	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:00 pm Subject: resolved
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 12647	We did a full reload of the OS and a new pagegate install, and after wrangling with DEP, we got pgmailserver service running and the popclient is popping the mailbox now.
Topic: POPClient not popping
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 12647	Forum: PageGate Support Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:15 pm Subject: POPClient not popping
Brian.Turner Replies: 3 Views: 12647	It is indeed, as is PGMailService (PGMailServer.exe).