JPS62219843A - Trouble information transmitting method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To determine a trouble diagnosing system even when the constitution of an information network system is unstable by adding the identifying information of a device to trouble information each time the trouble information passes through respective devices when at lest one device among plural devices transmits the trouble information of the self-constitution part to other device. CONSTITUTION:A device 24 is a microcomputer device to control and supervise lower order devices 25-27 and an input output port 38 transmits and receives the information between a loop 20 and a lower order device. In a ROM34, a program to specify the procedure to execute the control, supervising and trouble diagnosing of the lower order device is accommodated. Also, for other devices 12, 14, 16 and 22, the same constitution is obtained. The trouble information, to which the address of a trouble generating device 25 and a trouble discovering device is added, is sent to a main device 16 of the loop 20, then, the device address of the device 16 is added and next, sent to a main device 14 of a loop 10. Also in the device 14, to the received trouble information, further, the self-device address is added and sent to the device 12. The device 12 displays the received trouble information onto a displaying device 18 in accordance with the key input of an operator. When the address of a passing device added to the trouble information is traced reversely, it can be specified which device the trouble information belongs to, and therefore, the high flexibility can be held.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an information network system, and in detail,
The present invention relates to a method of transmitting failure information between devices forming a network.

[Prior Art] Conventionally, the following methods have been proposed as failure diagnosis methods for information network systems (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 59-21
No. 6344). In other words, the devices (nodes) that make up the network diagnose the life or death of devices such as terminals connected to themselves and hold the results, and the devices that monitor the network (network monitoring nodes) An inquiry is made to the component devices (nodes), and in response, each component device (node) sends the two diagnosis results to the network monitoring device.

[Problem to be Solved by the Invention 1] In the case of a hierarchical computer network, in the conventional method described above, the diagnostic system cannot be determined until after the configuration of the network, that is, the connection of each device, has been determined. There is a problem in that when the configuration of the network changes or the number of devices that make up the network increases or decreases, the fault diagnosis system for the entire network must be newly changed. This is because the configuration is such that only a device that has been specified in advance and given such a status, ie, a network monitoring device, can diagnose the failure of the entire network. That is,
Only after the device configuration and connections of the entire network are determined, the address of each device and the route to access that device are determined, and the monitoring device can inquire of that device whether there is a failure or not, and the results can be sent to a specific display device. It will be possible to display it.

[Means for solving the problems] The means adopted by the present invention to solve the above problems are as follows:
As the outline of the process is illustrated in FIG. A method for transmitting failure information of an information network system in which failure information is received at (S3), characterized in that each time the failure information passes through each device, identification information of the device is added to the failure information (S4). The gist of this paper is a failure information transmission method.

[Operation] When a certain device constituting an information network system detects a failure in its own component, for example, a part of itself or a subordinate device connected to itself, it generates failure information corresponding to the failure. , and sends it with its own identification information added to it to other devices on the network (
S2). Upon receiving this failure information (S3), the device roughly adds its own identification information to the received failure information (S4).
, and transmit it to another device (S5). In this way, each time failure information passes through each device, identification information for that device is added, and when this failure information reaches a display device connected somewhere on the network, this failure information is Identification information of all devices that have passed through is added. Therefore, in the display device, it is possible to specify the device that transmitted the failure information from the column of the added device identification information, and it is also possible to display the details, status, etc. of the failure based on the failure information itself.

[Example] An example of a computer network system for an automobile production line using the failure information transmission method according to the present invention will be described below. FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of this embodiment. This computer network system mainly consists of two network loops 10.20. Loop I
Devices 12, 14.16 such as computers are connected to IO, and similar devices 16.22 are connected to loop lI20.
゜24 is connected. That is, the loop 10 and the loop 20 are connected via the device 16. In Loop E 10, the device 14 is the main one, and in Loop T[20, the device 16 is the main one. Device 1
4 and the device 24 are each connected to a number of lower-level devices such as terminals, and the device 12 is connected to a display device 18.

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of a device @24 as an example of a device constituting the network. The device 24 is a microcomputer device that controls and monitors three inspection devices 25, 26, and 27 as lower-level devices. Its configuration is CPU30.
RAM32. ROM34, backup RAM36. It consists of an input/output port 38, a reference clock circuit 40, and a path line 42 that connects them, and the input/output port 3B sends and receives information between the loop II 20 and the lower devices 25, 26, and 27. Lower device 2 is in ROM34.
5, 26, and 27, programs that define procedures for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing failures are stored. In addition, other device 1
2, 14, 16, and 22 can also have the same configuration as above.

Lower devices 25, 26, 27 to which the device 24 is connected
The procedure for diagnosing a failure will be explained based on the flowchart of FIG. The device 24 executes the fault diagnosis subroutine shown in the flowchart of FIG. 4 at predetermined time intervals. When this subroutine is started, an inquiry is first made to a certain lower device, such as the lower device 25, regarding a failure (step 100). In response to this, it is determined whether there is a response from the lower-level device 25 (step 110). If there is a response, determine whether the response information contains an error code (
Step 120). If an error code is included in the response information, the device address ( This is also assumed to be 25.) and the error code in the response information to search for the error status and error content (step 130).

In step 110, if there is no response from the lower-level device 25 to which the inquiry was made, the process moves to step 130,
From the failure status table, the device address 25 of the lower device 25
Search for a column that corresponds to and has no error code, and read out the error status and error contents of that column. Note that in this case, since there is no error code from the lower-level device 25, the device 24 creates an error code.

Table 1 Fault Status Table Error status represents, for example, a fatal failure (D> or a warning failure (A>), etc., and the error content is, for example,
This is a concrete description of the failure, such as "1 failure" (equipment 1 not available) or "no data".

The error code, error status, error content, and failure device address obtained in this way are compiled to create failure information as shown in FIG. 5 (A>) (step 140).
. In FIG. 5 (A), 101 is an error code created by the fault finding device 24. Next, as shown in FIG. .) is added (step 150) and transmitted to another device (step 160). Here, in addition to the error code, the failure information also includes the error status and error details for each device 12 making up the network.
14, 16, 22, and 24, and even when a new device is added to the network, the advantage is that you only need to create a failure status table for that device. This is because there is. After transmitting the failure information, processing proceeds to step 170.

If there is a response from the lower device 25 in step 110, and if it is determined in step 120 that there is no error code in the response information, this means that the lower device 25 is normally operating separately, so the process continues in step 120. Moving on to 170.

In step 170, it is determined whether the inquiry to all lower-level devices connected to the device 24 has been completed, and if not, the same process is repeated from step 100 for the next lower-level device, and all lower-level devices are Once the inquiry is complete, the processing of this routine also ends.

The above is a case where the device 24 performs a failure diagnosis on a lower-level device connected to itself.Next, the procedure when the device 24 performs a failure diagnosis within itself is based on the flowchart shown in FIG. I will explain. In this case,
Unlike the case for the external device described above, when a failure occurs in the device 24 while the device 24 is performing other processing, the error handling section is activated by an internal interrupt, and this subroutine is executed by the error handling section. will be activated.

When this routine starts, first, in step 200, an error code is received from the error processing unit, and from the failure status table, it is determined that the device address is 24, that is, an internal failure, and the error code is received. Search the corresponding column (step 210). Then, create failure information in the same manner as above (step 220), change the own device address 24 in the same way (step 230), and send it to the other device (step 220). step 240).

The above is the procedure for generating and transmitting failure information in a certain device that constitutes a network.Next, it will be explained how the failure information transmitted in this way is transmitted through the network.

Fault information to which the addresses of the fault generating device 25 and the fault finding device 24 sent from the device 24 (see
)) is sent to the device 16 which is the main device of the loop II 20, where the device address of the device 16 is added (FIG. 5(C)).

Device 16 then sends this fault information to main device 14 in loop 110. Similarly to the above, the device 14 roughly adds its own device address to the received failure information (FIG. 5(D)). The device 14 displays this failure information on the display device 18.
The device 12 sends the received failure information (FIG. 5(D), etc.) to a device 12 having a
It is displayed on a display device 18 such as T.

The network 1 to work administrator can identify the device in which the failure has occurred and also know the details of the failure, based on the failure information displayed on the display device 18 with the address of the device via which the failure has occurred.

By employing this method, even when the display device 18 is connected to the device 22 of the loop II 20, the device 16
By simply transmitting the failure information from the device 22 to the device 22, it becomes possible to diagnose the failure without making any other changes.

Roughly speaking, even if, for example, a third loop (2) is connected to the above network via the device 14, and a device that happens to have the same device address 24 as that of the loop [20] is connected to that loop (2), the present method According to the above, by tracing back the device address of the relay device added to the failure information, it is possible to specify which device the failure information belongs to. Therefore, in this case as well, the existing fault diagnosis system can be used as is without changing the device address of loop (2).

[Effect] By adopting the failure information transmission method according to the present invention,
Even when the configuration of an information network system is uncertain, it is possible to determine a fault diagnosis system, and even when the network configuration changes or the number of devices that make up the network increases or decreases, it is possible to diagnose the failure of the entire network. No system changes are required. Therefore, the information network system can be provided with a high degree of flexibility.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart illustrating the outline of the present invention;
The figure is a configuration diagram of a computer network system that is an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of devices that make up the network, and FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of devices that make up the network. Flow rate that shows the procedure for troubleshooting? Figures 5(A) to 5(D) are explanatory diagrams that do not show the transition of failure information, and Figure 6 is a flowchart 1~ showing the procedure of processing performed by the above device when a failure occurs within its own device. be. 10...Loop 12.14,16,22.24...Device 18...Display device 20...Loop■

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. At least one of the plurality of devices transmits failure information of its own component to other devices, and
A failure information transmission method for an information network system in which failure information is received by any other device, characterized in that each time the failure information passes through each device, identification information of the device is added to the failure information. failure information transmission method.