Main > SCA Proc > Contact Advisor Instructions > Assist Help

Is Assist Locking Up?

Always try Control - R first. If you typed in a wrong field, etc., it may 'lock up' your page. Control R erases your last entry.

First, make an Assist-specific copy of your Default PuTTY settings:

Open PuTTY

  1. ) Highlight "default settings".
  2. ) Click "load".
  3. ) Type name in saved sessions: "Assist".
  4. ) Click "save".

Next, edit the Assist-specific settings for your particular situation:

  1. ) Type in the host name: "assist.sonlight.com".
  2. ) Go to the "connection" portion of the tree by clicking on the word "connection".
  3. ) Notice the "keep alive" is set to 0. Change that to 10.
  4. ) Click on "session" again.
  5. ) "Assist" should still be populated in the "saved sessions" field. Click "save" to save the changes we just made.

This is the key! The server gives up on your session after a period of inactivity. With "keep alive" turned on, your session will keep the server's attention by sending a "keep alive packet" every 10 seconds even if you do not produce any real activity by using the session. (This setting should really be configured with your network administrator's input. 10 seconds is purely a guess. It may be too frequent and therefore waste valuable server resources. It is also possible to configure the server at Sonlight's end to be more patient rather than having every "client" run keep alive's. There are many possible options.) 

 Now you have an Assist-specific connection to use.  When you open PuTTY, highlight Assist, click LOAD, click OPEN.