Re: [foxboro] Alarm Silence on Common Group Alarm Panels at 8.4.2

Thanks for this feedback Russ.  I have a few more questions.

All of our P91's and P92's are currently at Ver. 8.2 with the
exception of four P92 boxes that are
already upgraded to 8.4.2.  Only one of the boxes at 8.4.2 is part of a CAG.

We have no SOTM boxes on our MESH.

Does this mean that we need to install QF1009910 on all of our CAG 8.2
boxes before we
begin to install 8.4.2. on any of them?

If we don't install QF1009910 on all of them will the uninstalled 8.2
boxes using CAG's break the
socket on the 8.2 boxes and 8.4.2 boxes that have the QF's installed?

As we install QF1009910 on some of the 8.2 CAG boxes will the
uninstalled 8.2 CAG boxes
break the socket on the installed 8.2 boxes until we have all at 8.2
with the QF intalled?

Even though it is a pain, this solution makes it possible for us to
accomplish an upgrade
to a mixed paltform 8.2 / 8.4.2.  Our problem is that one of our boot
hosts at 8.2 is a CAG
member and we can't upgrade it to 8.4.2 at this time because the CP's
cannot be initialized
and rebooted as required by 8.4.2.  Without a QF at 8.2 that box would
constantly break the
8.4.2 CAG multicast sockets on the other boxes.

Please let me know if my understanding is correct.

Regards,
Tom VandeWater
Control Conversions, Inc.
Kapolei, HI

Boulay, Russ wrote:

Tom,
Install QF1009910 on the lower level workstations and it should solve
your incompatability issues....
Russ Boulay
Support Engineering Manager (GCS)
Invensys Process Systems
Foxboro, MA, USA 02035
Telephone:  +1-866-746-6477 (USA, Canada)
                        +1-508-549-2424 (Worldwide)
  E-mail:          ips.csc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Tom VandeWater
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 01:14 AM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [foxboro] Alarm Silence on Common Group Alarm Panels at
8.4.2
Jack, Cathy, and Russ,
    Jack, you probably already learned all of this the hard way like
we are learning it.  What did you decide to do?  Have you upgraded ALL
of your WS's to 8.4.2?
    At this point it appears that Foxboro changed a lot of stuff, (in
Ver.8.3 SOTM).  From what we can gather from TAC, they did this to
enable Solaris on the MESH workstations to co-exist on the MESH with
windows P91's and P92's. The changes apparently break the transport
socket communication on 8.3 and 8.4.2 boxes any time an 8.2 windows
workstation issues a Common Alarm Group Multi-cast. The Common Alarm
Group should continue to function correctly on all 8.2 Mesh
workstations but we were told by Tom Wiesnewski?? of TAC that as long
as an 8.2 WS using the CAG multicast was present on the MESH it would
break the socket used by the CAG on every 8.3 or 8.4.2 workstation.
Only when there are no more 8.2 CAG multicasts on the MESH, will the
8.3 and 8.4.2 CAG's be able to function. After installing Ver. 8.4.2
on some, but not all, of the P91/P92 boxes, here are the symptoms we
have seen:
The Current Alarm Display, (CAD), and Annunciator light updates will
not be successful between an 8.4.2 workstation being rebooted and it's
8.2 backup. The 8.2 backup box will display a message on the FV
message line saying it is trying to update the 8.4.2 WS but then it
displays a failure message. As a result, the 8.4.2 Annunciator lights
and CAD are blank at boot up. The 8.4.2 WS Annunciator and CAD will
receive new alarms from the CP's from that point forward but will not
be able to function as part of any Common Alarm Group. Silencing a
horn on the 8.2 WS in a CAG will silence the horn on other 8.2 WS's
defined in the CAG by sending a multicast that all WS's will have to
listen to and decide if it is for them. An 8.2 Multicast will cause
the 8.3 or 8.4.2 communication sockets to turn off/fail.   We are told
that rebooting the 8.4.2 WS or killing the AAServer.exe will repair
the socket as AAServer.exe respawns, but it will only work until the
next 8.2 Multicast happens across the MESH.
BTW, we installed the QF1011694 on the 8.4.2 station and it did not
fix the alarm backup recovery problem.
Russ, are you saying that to fix that, another quick fix has to be
installed on the 8.2 backup box also?
If the AIM Alarm Historian runs on an 8.2 P91 or P92 then 8.4.2 WS's
cannot receive alarm history on their Alarm History Display. It will
say the historian is not accessible in a dialog box. 8.2 WS's can
receive alarm history from an 8.2 historian. Conversely if the AIM
Alarm Historian runs on an 8.4.2 P91 or P92, then 8.2 WS's cannot
receive alarm history on their Alarm History Display but 8.4.2 WS's
can. We tested this extensively and that is our experience.
If someone else knows differently we would like to hear about it.
We cannot update all of our 8.2 WS's to 8.4.2 so we are only going to
upgrade a boot host to give us the FCP functionality we need and leave
the 8.2 operator WS's alone.
Regards,
Tom VandeWater
Control Conversions, Inc.
Kapolei, HI
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Grace, Kathy
<kathy.grace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


QF1011694 only fixed an alarm backup / recovery problem. It should not


affect annunciators.


Kathy
-----Original Message-----
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


[mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Boulay, Russ


Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 11:10 PM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [foxboro] Alarm Silence on Common Group Alarm Panels at


8.4.2


there is a alarm manager qf at v8.4.2 that fixes several issues ...new


aaserver QF1011694


Also any combination of a V8.4.2 co-existing with a lesser version


needs a QF on the lesser version..


________________________________
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of


Jack.Easley@xxxxxxxxxxxx


Sent: Wed 3/18/2009 10:30 PM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [foxboro] Alarm Silence on Common Group Alarm Panels at 8.4.2
We just upgraded one Unit to MESH 8.4.2 from 8.2 and have encountered


a


problem with all Annuciator keyboards in this area being able to


silence


alarms from any WP in this area as still correctly defined in
/usr/fox/wp/data/commgrp.cfg. The annunciator key-boards tied to the
alarm destination WPs work fine, but the other annuciator keyboards on
WPs not receiving alarms no longer silence alarms, even though they


did


at 8.2.
Anyone else experience this problem yet?
Jack Easley
Sr. I&C Technician
Luminant Power, Martin Lake Plant
Phone 903.836.6241
jack.easley@xxxxxxxxxxxx




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_______________________________________________________________________
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Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at
your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html
 
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