Wait for front end ping timeout

You can configure the wait-for-ping timeout with the following FGLPROFILE entry:

gui.protocol.pingTimeout = 800

Important: This feature is not supported when running or mobile devices, or when displaying applications on mobile devices.

It can happen that the user leaves the program for a while without using it. The network policy (firewall) might force a close of the TCP connection after a given period of inactivity. To avoid such connection shutdown when there is no GUI exchange, the front end sends a 'ping' event every N minutes (this is usually configurable in the front-ends) to keep the TCP connection alive. The front end ping is a normal situation and part of the GUI client/server protocol.

Important: With this "keep alive" technique, a front-end connection remains always open, even if the user leaves the workstation for several hours. If your network connection has a cost, you should consider to configure the front-end to turn off the ping event or stop it after a given number of pings. Check the front-end configuration documentation for more details.

If the front end program is not stopped properly (when killed by a system reboot, for example), the TCP connection is lost and the runtime system does not receive any more 'ping' events. In this case, the runtime system waits for a specified time before it stops with fatal error -8063.

By default, the runtime system waits for 600 seconds (10 minutes).

Important: If you set the wait-for-ping timeout to a value lower than the ping delay of the front-end, the program will stop with a fatal error after that timeout, even if the TCP connection is still alive. For example, with a front end having a ping delay of 5 minutes, the minimum value for this parameter should be about 330 seconds (5 minutes + 30 seconds to make sure the client ping arrives).