Tridion Content publisher server frequently down

Question

Tridion Publisher is frequently down.This happens in the middle of publishing? Any ideas on how to debug the root cause? I restarted the Tridion Service Host in the content Manager server and the publisher comes up.

Answer 1

This happens due to memory leakage, regarding memory leakage issues widely known for 5.3 and 2009 (mainly because of com+) as pointed by Pankaj.

We faced similar problem for one of the client and tried many a things by checking memory / garbage clear logic (disposable) in different areas. As a work around we placed a batch job (could be script or a .net program) scheduled which restarts the com+ and Publisher services after a certain time (we have monitored the tendency and time for the same).

This is not the desired solution but strange things happen around com+.

You can refer to this thread (though it was caused for event system and in your case it should not be responsible) just to find more information.

I suggest you need to find out the source for your memory leakage, maybe try putting some logs, check code (if Com / TDSE objects are released properly)

Please do mention the Tridion version for which you are facing issues and asking in the forum, it will help to provide the correct information and not based on any assumption.

Let me know if this helps !!

Answer 2

your question above is a bit abstract - it would help if you provide more information. anyway, I have faced this issue multiple times and following are few reasons/analysis we had done to resolve it:

• The most probably cause of this happening (in our case) was a memory leak - this may be in the Deployer Extension, Storage Extension, Custom Resolver, TBBs etc. - In one instance of this error, we had this memory leak in the Deployer Extension and in another extension it was in the C# TBB in use
• You have not mentioned the version of SDL Tridion - if it is legacy system like R5.3 or 2009 which heavily relies on the COM+ - then there is a huge possibilities of COM+ related errors - you must check and re-check your code for any possible optimizations
• Another thing you should do is follow the SDL recommended Maintenance Plans for your SDL Installation - Reindexing, Purging etc. - and check it resolve your issue

Further, you should check in in the Windows Event Viewer on CM server or Deployer/Publisher logs on CD server for any possible Warning/Error logging. Also, you must try the Suggestion made by Nuno to stop the Publisher process and run it through command line in the debug mode as - tcmpublisher /debug. Monitor this and this would most probably gives you some meaningful error to track.

Answer 3

I had the same thing caused by an endless loop in the template. For us it was the main template, but only occurred when a metadata field linked to an item, and that item linked to the item with the metadata field... We added code to check if the 'linked to' item had already been added or not...