nilm.exe hogging CPU

[RobBoyer]

Hello,

I am having the problem with the nilm.exe process hogging the processor.  (The nilm.exe process continually sucks up almost all of the CPU resulting in poor overall system performance.)  I am running NI Volume License Manager version 2.1, and the idea suggested in other related posts to disable the service is not an option for me since other PCs on the network rely on my machine to log into their NI crapware.  Has anyone else run into this problem and managed to resolve it without simply disabling the service?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Rob

[JettR]

Hey Rob,

This is interesting behavior indeed.  Does this happened randomly or after an event, such as the computer coming back from sleep mode?  Is your license server set to "Start License Server on System Start"?  I look forward to hearing back from you.

[RobBoyer]

Hi Jett,

Thanks for the response.  I have actually managed to track down the event (or at least one of them) that seems to be causing the issue.  I have two network adapters in my machine - one for my company's corporate LAN, and another for some local test equipment.  That second NIC card is constantly being connected and disconnected since the test equipment is regularly turned on and turned off.  As it turns out, this problem arises as soon as the network adapter is disabled.

Now the question is, is there any way to tell the license manager to only look at a specific network adapter?  I suspect that the license manager is broadcasting some message and expecting a response - one that it will never get from my local test equipment network.  I'm going to try using a network sniffer to get a better feel for what is going on, but I'm not sure that will necessarily get me any closer to resolving the issue.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Rob

Message Edited by RobBoyer on 02-27-2008 02:33 PM

[JettR]

Hey Rob,

Will you contact us by going to ni.com/ask?  Also, when you contact us, we are going to need the MAC address of both network adapters (and which one VLM should use).  I look forward to hearing from you.

[RobBoyer]

Hi Jett,

I've opened an e-mail request via the link you posted.  Let me know if I need to do anything else.

Thanks for your assistance.

Rob

[falkpl]

I saw this issue with the liscence manager many years ago (maybe 2000-2002) time frame and it went away when the service was disabled but havent seen this issue with any newer versions of labview. 

[MichaelWebster]

Just to add my $0.02 in, I ran across this problem earlier today and came here looking for a solution.
One thing that pops out at me is that I had just recently unplugged my network cable to briefly use it on a different machine.  This somewhat coincides with Rob's observation that this occured for him after a NIC disconnect/reconnect cycle.
I'll pop back by if it occurs again, but hopefully it won't as I don't regularly unplug the network on my main development machine.

[RobBoyer]

Hi mdwebster,

In my experience, you can fully expect this problem to crop up every time you lose connectivity on the network adapter.  If that doesn't happen very often, then it is probably a non-issue.  For me, it was a rather large annoyance because the network connection was constantly connecting and disconnecting - by design.

In case anyone is interested, a work-around was provided to me which amounted to a new license file that was created specifically against the MAC address of my corporate LAN NIC card.  This resolves the issue assuming the alternate NIC card is disconnected when I boot up the PC.

On the other hand, I think we should hope that NI puts some effort into actually resolving, instead of just covering up these kinds of issues - no production software should be so poorly designed as to suck up all CPU time trying to talk to a NIC card that is disabled/disconnected.  Many major software houses have struck on the idea of self-monitoring services (an easy to implement and effective solution to these kinds of problems).  Maybe NI will strike on the idea one day.

Rob

[Dag23]

I had this same issue happen today when I restarted my laptop.  NILM took over and would not give up, even though my wireless network had not made a connection.  Is there a way to turn off doing this at boot.  Why not just when I try to use the software. 

[pfcm]

I am also suffering from this problem...not quite a rare phenomenon.