Probe timeout on Powershell Activity

[TimbitGrrl]

While executing a Powershell activity on a MID Server via a workflow, every so often it fails due to a probe timeout.

Fault: Probe timeout reached: terminating


Any idea how to configure the probe timeout? I want to increase it as it's erroring in about 2 minutes. I want to increase it and see what happens (AD scripts could run a bit longer sometimes.)

[Jason Stephens]

We were getting this error. It's been a while back, but here were the things we had to fix in order to get RBA to work in general. I don't remember which one fixed the error you are seeing, but at least this will give you a few things to look at...

1 - The target machine has to be "trusted for delegation" on the AD side of things.

2 - Make sure the service on the MID Server is running under the account you are using.

3 - Make sure the installer (if you are trying to install) is not the issue. Maybe try another. We realized that all .msi's are not equal. Some work, and some do not.

Like I said I'm not sure which if these fixed that specific issue, but it was one of them. We were trying to do the same thing you are trying (set the probe timeout), and we never figured it out. But we also didn't need it once we realized why it was timing out.

Hopefully this will help.

Jason

[TimbitGrrl]

Ours was running consistently but failing every once in a while. So it wasn't a set up issue. It was an interruption somewhere but I still increased the probe timeout to see if it helps...

Here's the answer:

The default timeout value is set for 300 ms. This may be changed by adding the wmi_timeout probe parameter to probe "Windows - Powershell":

Under the related list "Probe parameters" > New
name = wmi_timeout
active = true
Probe = Windows - Powershell
value = 900
- this will extend the timeout value to 900 ms.

[Jason Stephens]

Can you please repost if this actually helps? I'm glad you got an answer to the error, but we're able to make it happen (or not) on demand by changing one of the things I mentioned... I'm now curious if we changed this setting if we would get even better results - we still see quirly things every now and then.

Good find!

Jason

[TimbitGrrl]

I don't have anything to report yet. It didn't happen frequently and I couldn't produce it on demand. But just as I changed my timeout settings in Powershell (due to some Active Directory queries taking a bit longer), I figured the probe settings should probably be a bit longer too. I will report later if we seem to be free of this error.

If there are system issues we will obviously run into this error again but I'm just hoping this change prevents the errors we were getting every once in a while when the systems were all running fine.

[TimbitGrrl]

It is working fine for the most part. On a long running script like migrating an exchange mailbox, it fails. What I did for that particular case was to put timer and then another activity to check if the migration worked. This will cause the activity (probe time out) to fail but the timer makes it wait a while and then when the next activity checks the location of the mailbox, it's successful and the migration completed. That's my work around for an expected long-running activity.