New Connection Manager

A new connection manager allows a user to reconnect to dropped sessions.

Overview:

A new connection manager allows a user to reconnect to dropped sessions. This capability will be especially useful after the new HTML client is released and users are connecting from mobile devices.

Usage:

The new connection manager is controlled by the following settings in the <servicename> .ini file (or registry settings if Windows):

To use the new connection manager, set AppxInterface to 'Pipe'. The normal, default, method is 'Socket', which does not have a reconnect capability. The 'Pipe' connection type creates a Named Pipe connection between the server and the new connection manager. The new connection manager then creates a Socket connection between itself and the client. If the connection is dropped, the new connection manager will end. The server will detect this and go into a 'reconnect' mode and will hold Named Pipes connection open for 'AppxPipeTimeout' minutes. If the user reconnects to the same session id within that time limit, a new connection manager will re-establish the connection to the client. Since the server has been holding the Socket connection open, the user will be able to continue their session.

AppxPipeDir is the folder where the new connection manager will keep the named pipes and other connection related files. This is relative to the 'services' directory.

AppxPipeExe is the name of the new connection manager (appxcomm). On Linux/Unix servers this is relative to the 'services' directory. On Windows servers, this must be the complete path to the 'appxcomm.exe' program (usually found in the 'services' directory).

AppxPipeTimeout is the length of time (in minutes) the new connection manager should hold the session open. After this time has expired, the session will be closed and the user will not be able to reconnect.

Note that even though the new connection manager holds the connection open, any data typed in a field before the user pressed Enter or clicked a button will be lost. For example, if they were entering a name and the connection was lost before they pressed Enter or clicked a button, when they reconnect those characters would be lost.

Reconnecting to a session

The login dialog box has a 'Reconnect Id' field:

To reconnect to a lost sesssion, enter the process id (PID) of the lost session. The PID is normally displayed in the title bar of the client, however, most of us don't pay any attention to it so it's unlikely we'll remember it to reconnect. You can check the client preferences to see what the last PID was. To do this, click the 'Options' tab, then the 'Advanced' button, and look for 'lastPid' in the [LastLogin] section:

An Appx System administrator can connect to another users disconnected session, if they know the PID of the lost session.

Comments:

Read what other users have said about this page or add your own comments.

Connecting to an interactive session (live) on a Windows server requires the ...appx\services\sessions directory to be present..

-- Jeff Prentice - 2016-12-13

-- JeanNeron - 2013-10-21