Hi All:

We just started having a problem on an otherwise well established, reliable system. For reasons we have been unable to determine, the FP-DOS program, which uses a 1992 version of Novell's FTP.EXE for DOS, has suddenly started having random failures in the command MDELETE *.*, which is used to clean up (ie: delete multiple) files in the host directory after retrieving all available files (MGET *.*). The random failures seem to be happening after about a 1/2 hr of looping every couple of minutes back to the same script between file transfers, with an error displayed on the screen of: "mdelete:Record bigger than request". (Another thoroughly useful example of superior messaging...). BTW: Only one to six files exist in the host directory at any given time before we delete them after transfer. The MGET seems to always work, and the MDELETE works usually until it fails. At that point, we can exit the FP program and run the script manually from DOS and have the same error, or manually type the commands from FTP in interactive mode and achieve delete by DELETE (filename) for each specific file, but once MDELETE starts failing, we cannot recover without a re-boot.

Upon re-boot of the PC, the FoxPro program starts right up and the next invocation of the FTP process usually works just fine. We have had two instances where that did not fix the problem until rebooted a 2nd time. We have also seen a couple of instances where the problem spontaneously fixed itself briefly without a re-boot, and then started failing again...

This problem suddenly started happening last Thursday night and originally affected two different similar programs running on different P-233 PC workstations (DOS-6.22/Novell-5.0/4.x). The first program spontaneously fixed itself after a re-boot, but the 2nd one continues to have the problem. Both FoxPro programs and scripts have not been touched since Aug. 1999 and have run with little change for a couple of years. Inside the main loop we do invoke NetLib's N_MAPDRIVE() function to use the same drive letter for two different servers target directories, but otherwise its pretty bare bones FP with a RUN/0 for the FTP call, and a RUN/0 for DOS RENAME of the incoming files for pickup by a different process by others. We have been assured by the network guys that they made no changes that might affect this. The HP Unix guys for the host system swear that there are no access rights changes and that the user ID and password used by the FTP script are fine (and it usually works...), and that the directories have no hidden files or other strangeness that might affect the MDELETE command. This is all inside our firewall. We even tried another similar PC (set up fresh) on a different node of the network, and had the same problem after a little over 1/2-hr between file transfers. The first file transfer/delete after reboot usually works, but if there is a delay before the next one is where the failures have been. As far as I know, we are using the same version of the Novell FTP.EXE we always have.

So, we're stumped. Anyone have any ideas what that bizarre message really means? Any other ideas on areas we should look into? Anyone have a later version of the Novell FTP.EXE or know where I can acquire one? We really don't want to go to a new vendor for this, to minimize other potential issues.

Sorry for all the explanatory text, but I wanted to provide all the background I could think of right up front. All help and thoughts are appreciated. We need to solve this quickly to keep the users from lynching us over an inundation of duplicated data being squirted out to them everytime the problem re-surfaces.

TIA.

Rob