NOTICE: All Alpari accounts periodically stalled

[PipCop]

Just an FYI - in the past few weeks I have noticed that ALL instances of the Alpari demo accounts have been logged off randomly. I have tried to catch them when they do this, but my reporting system is unable to determine if MetaTrader is logged in or not. Therefore, if a robot appears to have no activity on an Alpari account, this is the reason why.

If you suspect ANY robot has this issue, please contact me and let me know ASAP so I can log the account back in.

Thanks!

[marine1983]

Not sure if you were aware pipcop. Alpari had swapped the servers. As they were installing servers to also run mini accounts. This may of caused the issues with the demo's

[PipCop]

That makes sense, thanks for letting me know. We'll need to keep an eye on things just to be safe.

[1ka]

PipCop,

Attached is a simple EA that checks the current connection to the server. If the server is down it tries to email you. You'll get another email when the server is back up. MT4 spawns off the sending of emails so I can't check if it worked OK, hence you'll get two mails when anything goes wrong, just to be sure.

To use, just attached this to a new chart. The CheckDelay parameter is the poll-time used to check, defaults to 30 seconds. It uses the mail settings defined in MT4's options, so make sure that these are set correctly.

I'm assuming that account and server info is enough to identify the EA, but there is a parameter where you can put in a custom message.

It works by looping in the init() method of the EA. It seems to work OK, but I don't really know what the implications of this are, as it never processes any ticks. You should try it on a test server and leave it running for a few days. Better still, leave it running with a disconnected network too, just to see what happens

If anyone wants the source, just PM me.

Enjoy

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Emails show:

From: "Expert Advisor" <1ka@softyspammer.com>
To: "1ka" <1ka@softwyer.com>
Subject: Problem with server or network - Recovered?
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 11:59:56 +0100

On this server: AlpariUK-Demo, for Account Name: 1ka, Account Number: 6454333993
This is a place holder for a custom message

[PipCop]

That's AWESOME. Thanks very much! I have so many problems trying to monitor all these robots I really appreciate the tools!

[1ka]

Originally Posted by 1ka

...
It works by looping in the init() method of the EA. It seems to work OK, but I don't really know what the implications of this are, as it never processes any ticks. You should try it on a test server and leave it running for a few days. Better still, leave it running with a disconnected network too, just to see what happens
...

Update:

I've been running this on my demo account for a while now and have not noticed any adverse affects. It picks up the odd problem with my Alpari UK broker and seems to report them correctly.