help! I seem to have deleted a host - thought I clicked Stop

BobN

I had this message almost finished when I had a thought, the following of which resolved my problem.
I am still posting this message because 1) it might be instructive to others, 2) It might be entertaining to others, 3) It might give others a good laugh at my expense, and 4) It took a hell of a long time to type up, proofread, etc. and I'm going to post it anyway.
The last bit of the message explains how I resolved my problem - it is after the text "NEVER MIND" near the bottom of this message.
Message Follows:
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I was getting some strange behavior in my browser (FF). A link on a web page was displaying one of my pages on the local host instead of the page on the net.
I was on the page http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ganja and I clicked the link, near to top of the page, which reads: "Free Health Information"
The page that came up is the "home" page for the local host - at least for the way the local host is currently configured. It was rather strange but I've seen other strange things happen as regards getting web site pages sort of tangled up with local host pages before. It really wasn't important but I wanted to take a quick look at it.
I decided to get Abyss out of the mix to see what would happen with that link and instead of terminating it via the SysTray Icon, I clicked the Hosts menu then clicked (or so I thought) Stop.

NO - I have no idea why I didn't just terminate the program instead. Maybe I can blame it on the lateness of the hour (actually the earliness since it is 0144 here) or the fact that one of our cats is camped out on my chest and he occasionally is blocking my view of the screen - I'm sort of half sitting and half laying on the bed up against the headboard with my chest at about a 40 degree angle. Bailey (the cat) is just balanced on my chest. I'm trying not to move too much so that he won't engage a claw or two in order to avoid slipping down my chest.
Okay, yes I'm talking nonsense but I just screwed up a really well set up local host that I use for web site testing and have no idea how to recover from the mess.
Well, after Stopping the host, I went back to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ganja and clicked that link again and got a "can't find server" message.
Oh well, I gave up on that and wanted to restart (or "unstop") the host.
Somewhere along about this time I got a message saying something about the host having been deleted.
I can't give you the exact message because I was typing something into the browser address bar and just a nanosecond before I pressed the Enter key, the message box popped up and the Enter went there and closed the message box. I've not been able to figure out what caused the message to appear and thus I can't get it displayed again so I can read the entire thing.
I shut down Abyss and restarted it and things didn't go too well. Then, and now every time I start Abyss the following happens:
1) The title on the window first displays as "Abyss Web Server" and then about a second or so later changes to "Abyss Web Server [Halted]"
2) The following is displayed in that textarea on the window:

Abyss Web Server X1 (v 2.7)
Copyright © Aprelium - 2001-2011
Cannot listen to the console port
The console is not running

3) If I click the Hosts menu all that shows is an entry for Add but it is not active, it is grayed out.
4) The item Show in the Hosts menu is grayed out.
5) If I click the Settings menu item in the Console menu, the Port, on the "Web Console Settings" window, shows as 9999.
5) If I click Autodetect, I get the message "Cannot detect a free port"
6) If I just click Ok on the "Web Console Settings" window, I get the message "Bad port value or the port is already used by another application." I have to click Cancel on the "Web Console Settings" window to close it.
Does anyone have any idea what I have screwed up here and how I can recover from this mess?
As soon as I post this message I'm going to restart the entire system and cross my fingers and hope it resolves the problem.
Oh, one last thing, is there a Delete item in the Hosts menu? If so, perhaps I clicked that instead of Stop???
I don't remember ever seeing a Delete item in the Hosts menu - but I'm not 100% sure.
Or, did clicking the Stop item through me into a bug of some sort?
Help!
Any suggestions (anatomically possible suggestions, that is) will be appreciated.
Ahh - no I have not lately partaken of any ganja (the subject of that web page I was at) so you can rule that out as to why I screwed up or why I'm having problems fixing the matter.
I encountered the word ganja in some reading and wanted to check that it meant what I thought it meant. In my day we just called it marijuana, pot or grass but not ganja.
Actually, the last time I had any pot was way back in the mid 1980's. If you are wondering, I will be 61 on January 2, 2013. I've been in Data Processing (what we old timers call it) for 39+ years.
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NEVER MIND - - it just occurred to me that I may have dismissed that message "Bad port value or the port is already used by another application"a tad too hastily and I gave it a bit more thought. Could Abyss still be running, the copy that was running when things went south? A copy not showing up as an "application" but only as a "process" in Task Manager.
I started the Task Manager and looked at the processes. I sorted them by name and there was an entry for Abyss even though it did not show on the Applications tab.
I ended the process, restarted Abyss and then it started normally - well, almost normally. It said the host was stopped. So I clicked the Hosts menu, then "Default host on port . . ." and then Start and everything is back to normal.
To see if I could recreate that "Host deleted. . ." message, I Stopped the Host and did what I think I did before when I got the message - no dice, I could not reproduce the message.
I Started the host and everything is just fine.
So, hope this serves some purpose if only to point out that sometimes you just have to let things "simmer" on that back burner in your mind for awhile and a solution may be "cooked" up. I find that back burner very valuable. I have put countless problems to simmer there and have found answers, albeit that it might take a day or two to come to a boil and the answer to come together.
Well, in closing - I love Abyss - I have PHP set up on the local host and I can test every feature of my web sites before I put them on the server for final testing.
It is a great package (even if it behaves rather strangely once or twice a year - or appears to)
Bob

aprelium-support

BobN,
When you see the following message:

Abyss Web Server X1 (v 2.7)
Copyright © Aprelium - 2001-2011
Cannot listen to the console port
The console is not running

this usually means that there is already another instance of Abyss Web Server already running and using the confiugred ports. This instance is usually hidden and running as a Windows Service.

BobN

Yes, as I said in my post, that was the problem - there was a copy running which no longer was showing as a "Application" (in the Task Manager Applications tab) and had to be killed via task manager.
This is not at all uncommon in windows. For instance, Firefox has a history, in earlier releases, of this happening occasionally.
You had to fire up Task Manager and locate the item in the processes list and kill it.
The processes list contains not only the "windows" processes, as you said, but also those processes associated with applications shown in the applications tab of Task Manager.
As a matter of fact, if you right click an item on the Applications tab and right click and select Go To Process, you'll be taken to the Processes tab with the process for the application highlighted.
Not everything in the Processes tab are "widows" processes, that is, processes which are part of the operating system. All loaded programs will have an entry in the Processes tab regardless of whether they are an applications, windows processes, etc.
In my experience, these disconnects - the application no longer showing on the Applications tab but still present on the Processes tab - occur during shutdown.
I would think that the application goes through the motions of freeing resources and shutting down but hangs at some point after the applications tab information has been cleared but the program is still loaded in memory and at least partially active, as far as windows is concerned, and thus there is still an entry in the Processes tab.
I guess that never having seen any problem of this sort (or actually any problems of any sort) with Abyss, I simply did not consider it as the cause of my problem as soon as I should have.
Bob

aprelium-support

BobN wrote
This is not at all uncommon in windows. For instance, Firefox has a history, in earlier releases, of this happening occasionally.

Contrarily to Firefox which is a desktop application and has to run on the screen, Abyss Web Server is a server and when acting as a Windows Service, it has to run in the background and it has to be hidden from the user using the desktop. Otherwise it would not have been called a Windows Service. :)

BobN

Yes, this is a 6 year old thread but..
I have to address the issue of Abyss running as a windows service.
I believe that is one of the configuration options and you can specify it is not to run as a service which means it will run as a process when started - either when windows starts or when you manually it - again, an option you can set.
Accordingly, if you don't configure it as a service, it will show in the Task Manger process tab, not the services tab.
Yes, something such as Abyss appears to run in the background but actually it is simply a of the matter of the program not having a visible window until you request one.
My problem was that I had automatically closed an error message without reading it and it was not the message I thought I was closing. Thus, when I tried to start Abyss to correct the problem, it complained of things already in use. Looking in the Task Master process list disclosed an instance of Abyss still running - I thought I had shut it down.
So, I ended that process and restarted Abyss and all was right with it.
Again, Abyss can run as a windows service or a process - it's up to you.
I use Abyss for testing, not as a server to the world. Thus, I only want it up and running when I need it for testing. I gain nothing having it started as a service or auto started as a process when Windows starts.
Why let it sit there, taking up resources, when it is not needed? I don't spend all of my time testing web sites. I also use my systems for other purposes and auto starting Abyss simply wastes resources. It can be auto started either as a service or by executing the program, say from the Start menu.
Bob