Teacher App Services Offline but they are online

[SimonCygnetIT]

Hi all

 

Is anyone else experiencing this problem where teacher app services are saying they are offline but they were working and the the services are up and running?

 

I have a call logged with Capita at the moment but we are no further on with all our schools.

 

Simon

[Mark_Atkins1]

Have you tried to re-start the SIMS Services Manager service even though it says it is still running?

This happens to us fairly regularly and re-starting this service seems to solve the problem.

 

Hope this helps

 

Mark

[SimonCygnetIT]

I've tried everything. restarted SSM multiple times, restarted server, re-installed the whole of SSM and still the problem is there. It's just really strange as the school before summer holidays was up and running just fine.

[TC-1927]

Hi - Yes! Pretty much exactly as you say.

 

We have tickets open with capita and our firewall provider (LA) at present, I would guess it's getting stuck in the firewall somewhere but neither side have given us an answer so far.

[Stevnec]

We have this at 2 of our schools (4 in total atm using the teacher app) - one has to be restarted every day and can fail again during the day - the other seems to be a bit more robust but has needed restarting every other day.

Have to attempt to load the teacher app administration console to get the services not running message before restarting SSM and then loading the teacher app administration console works.

Unfortunately restarting SSM before attempting to load the Teacher app console does not work - (did think of scheduling a regular restart of the SSM via a batch file but doesn't work unless been into teacher app console first).

This is also with Capita - but so far no real solution.

[TC-1927]

Had a reply from Capita - looks like it is a firewall issue for us. Back to our LA we go.

[Baymax]

You are not alone @SimonCygnetIT - it does indeed look like firewall ports. See this also around the topic: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/153065-teacher-app-settings-5.html

 

Nick.

[PhilNeal]

We have five cases (out of >600 schools using Teacher App) outstanding with these symptoms. We're fairly certain these are firewall ports not being open and are working with LAs and Grids to close these down.

[TC-1927]

Hi @PhilNeal - wondered if we were one of the five or if our issues are related. Will DM yiu our school details now. Ta!

[Mark_Atkins1]

Just as a note to this, we have had this again this week and after a CAPITA remote session onto our server found that the clock on the server was 7 minutes slow. Apparently if the clock is more than 5 minutes out then the service stops working.

 

Hope this helps someone!!

 

Mark

[john]

Just as a note to this, we have had this again this week and after a CAPITA remote session onto our server found that the clock on the server was 7 minutes slow. Apparently if the clock is more than 5 minutes out then the service stops working.

 

Hope this helps someone!!

 

Mark

 

If your server clock is more than 5 out your going to have many other issues that are NOT SIMS, you need to sort your NTP out on your network, for instance more than 5 your kerberos will be broken so AD integration stuff will fail like logons etc..

[Mark_Atkins1]

We don't have any of that because we are the LA hosting databases on behalf of schools. Server is managed by CAPITA Ramesys and is specifically for hosting these SIMS databases.

 

We have logged a ticket with them to resolve it as this only appears to have happened this week.

 

Mark

[craig2562]

Did anyone ever resolve this?

[PhilNeal]

It's almost always caused by ports not being opened as required. See our documentation. I believe the console now allows you to test to see if ports are open or not.