PanelView Program Password protecting itself?!?

We have a PV+400 on our floor that has something quite odd going on.

The program hasn't been changed in quite a while, at least a couple of years. Yesterday I was asked to make some changes to the program. So, I went onto the server and grabbed the APA, and attempted to restore it. When I started the restore, I was asked for a password. My boss had no idea why it would be password protected, so I figured someone must have accidentally toggled the protection when making the backup. I tried a blank password (usually what happens when someone accidentally enables the protection) and the restore went on with no issues. Awesome!

After restoring, I tried to open the program, but I was asked to log in to factory talk. Canceling the prompt cancels the loading of the program, so I was unable to access the program from that APA.

I notified my boss, and he decided to do a little digging. He found out that the more recent .MER files on the PanelView were all password protected as well. The only file that he was able to restore and actually ACCESS the program was the oldest .MER file on the PanelView.

After he successfully restored the program on his laptop, he let me know that I needed to use that old program .MER and the GPX files that were created upon restoring the APA (even though I can't open the file in Studio, the file structures were still created when the restore happened) to make sure all the changes we lost were ported to the old file. He then deleted the program from his laptop. He DID NOT download to the PanelView or make any changes whatsoever.

So today I uploaded that oldest MER (double checked that it was the right one) and attempted a restore from runtime. The restore went through no problem, but when I tried to open the program, I was again asked for a factory talk login! I told my boss, he uploaded the same .MER again and did the restore again on the SAME computer he was successful with yesterday. Now HIS computer wants a password to access the restore as well.

What the hell is going on? Now all 4 copies of the program stored on that PanelView AND the APA on the server are all acting like they are password protected. Even if someone accidentally password protected all but the oldest .MER, we are POSITIVE that no one downloaded to the panelview in the last few days, but an .MER that had no password protection yesterday is now asking for a password today.

Is this the rise of the machines? Is Skynet self aware?

Sounds like it's a factory talk security issue. Are you attempting to do this through Remote Desktop?

Nope, just uploading the MER from the PanelView onto two different laptops. Both laptops are used fairly regularly for this task on different PanelViews without ever having this issue.

Do they all share the same Factory Talk directory?

Nope. Each laptop is just set up with a local directory. Only four programmers in the building (I just started a couple months ago) so they must not feel it's necessary

After redefining my Factory Talk Local and Network directory with no luck, I ended up just having to make a new panelview program and importing the GPX files from the old file structure. That seems to have taken care of the problem for now.

I bet your FactoryTalk version is less then 8.0. In 8.0 FactoryTalk combined the system file with the application file. So before FactoryTalk 8.0 you could restore the APA file with the security settings from your previous project. This may be what happened. When you tried to open your bosses MER file it used the system file that came from the mer from the panel. This system file contains the security. We use security on all of our projects so I always select a setting when restoring an APA that says something like restore the application along with the system file.

Maybe you should limit the number of people who can make programming changes to the controls group. that will control the program software revision.

set up a policy that anytime a program change is made, it has to be placed on a server. that copy will be the master and it rules. if the project is being worked on, have a subfolder to place the master in and call it checked out and being modified.

james

James Mcquade said:

Maybe you should limit the number of people who can make programming changes to the controls group. that will control the program software revision.

set up a policy that anytime a program change is made, it has to be placed on a server. that copy will be the master and it rules. if the project is being worked on, have a subfolder to place the master in and call it checked out and being modified.

james

Click to expand...

That would be fantastic, but I'm the low man on the totem pole and it seems like the higher ups have given up on the idea of everyone being personally responsible for just backing up their changes. It's rather frustrating to be honest. It takes an extra 2 minutes, if even that, to make an APA and put it on the server. I do it every single time.