To increase the indent on a section of code in VUGen, you can simply press the TAB key. This works as expected. To decrease the indent, the SHIFT + TAB keys work as they do in other programs such as MS Word and even VIM.
Hopefully everyone already knows this shortcut, though as its not documented in the menu, some people may have missed it.
I have setup many machines to control and generate load. My initial experiences was with LINUX based systems, then as the tools progressed, the operating systems regressed onto the Windows platform. It seemed that back in the days of KVM’s, setting a new background colour for each machine was the way to tell them apart. Next came the system information imprinted on a wallpaper with tools like BgInfo from SysInternals. Unfortunately for this approach, a majority of RDP clients are setup to remove wallpapers (and should be if they aren’t). So in 2011 do we have a better way of displaying machine information on the desktop?
Continue Reading…
A previously mentioned the move from a download filters black list to a white list to avoid hitting servers outside of our testing scope.
One interesting outcome of this change was a nasty C compile error.
Error: C interpreter run time error: Action.c (39): Error -- memory violation : Exception ACCESS_VIOLATION received.
As it turns out, as we were using a proxy auto-config (PAC) file and this error occurs if your download filters are set to block your pac files. Luckily, LoadRunner does report that the PAC file was “Not downloaded due to a filter”, yet on the very next line reports that it was “downloaded and evaluated successfully”
Starting to download the proxy automatic configuration script, URL="http://www.headwired.com/proxy.pac" [MsgId: MMSG-27097]
Warning -26554: Not downloaded due to a filter, URL="http://www.headwired.com/proxy.pac" [MsgId: MWAR-26554]
Proxy automatic configuration script (URL="http://www.headwired.com/proxy.pac") downloaded and evaluated successfully [MsgId: MMSG-27096]
Surely if iframes are considered a critical resource, then the PAC file should cause an error and not just a warning, especially when it causes such a poorly handled memory violation error.
Luckily adding the pac file location to your download filters include list fixes this problem.
Everynow and then, Vugen will have a little episode and decide that its default results directory is locked, and you will be presented with an friendly dialog box like the one below.
If you have ever wondered what is going on, it turns out the culprit is mmdrv.exe. This executable is the Multithreaded Driver Command Line application that is used to simulate virtual users, and killing all instances from the task manager will remove any locks on your results directory, and you can go back to normal vugenning.
While most of us don’t mind using multiple directories, it seems that even in Vugen 11, the replay log window will always show the log of the first results directory after playback. This can be very confusing when debugging scripts.
This exe can also be used manually to execute vuser scripts from the command line. This can be handy for environment smoke tests. I will write more about some alternate uses for mmdrv.exe in a later post.
LoadRunner happily accepts blank parameters, it just that Vugens parameters screen doesn’t realise it yet. Web searches show this being a problem for people as far back as 2008 and there are all kinds of solutions posted.
The blank parameter in notepad
Even though our blank parameter does not show up in Vugen parameter window, it is recognised.
And heres your blank parameter.
Nothing new here, though for me, it was more of a problem than a solution. I was caught out with two blank lines at the end of a parameter file. When editing in notepad, be sure to only have one blank line at the end of your parameter files. The single blank newline must be there, as its used as an end of file delimeter, and is not used as a parameter.
