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IbcAlpha / IBC

Automation of Interactive Brokers TWS. You can download the latest release here: https://github.com/ibcalpha/ibc/releases/latest
GNU General Public License v3.0
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IbAutoClosedown=no doesn't work properly with TWS 974 #38

Closed rlktradewright closed 4 years ago

rlktradewright commented 5 years ago

There has been a change in behaviour in TWS 974 relating to the IbAutoClosedown=no setting in config.ini, compared to earlier TWS versions.

IBC made this work by intercepting the Exit Session Setting dialog that TWS displays about 4 or 5 minutes before the configured autologoff, and changing the autologoff to 23hrs 50min ahead: thus, if it was 07:43PM, IBC would change it to 07:33PM, and TWS would then continue running. At 07:28PM the next day, it would display the Exit Session Setting dialog again, and IBC would repeat the process: this could be continued indefinitely.

But with TWS 9.74, TWS only seems to allow this deferral to happen once: the second time, it ignores the fact that IBC has changed the autologoff time, and just logs off anyway.

I’m not convinced I’ve fully understood this behaviour yet, but I do have a possible workaround in mind. So it might be a while before I announce a fix. It’s quite possible that I won’t be able to fix it, but we’ll see. I’m not personally bothered by this, because I’ve never liked keeping TWS running indefinitely in this way, so I don’t use IbAutoClosedown=no for my live account: I set the autologoff time to just before the nightly reset, and then restart IBC automatically a few minutes later using Task Scheduler (you could use cron on Linux)

bantu commented 5 years ago

Suggesting to replace 947 with 974 in the ticket title.

rlktradewright commented 5 years ago

Thanks. Done.

rlktradewright commented 5 years ago

Having further investigated this new behaviour, I have concluded that there is nothing IBC can do to prevent it.

Therefore, if you wish to use IBC with TWS 974 or later, you will need to take account of the fact that setting IbAutoClosedown=no will no longer allow you to keep TWS running all week: it will postpone the autologoff once, but not the next time.

I recommend that you configure the TWS autologoff to occur just before the nightly reset time for your region, and then use some mechanism such as Task Scheduler on Windows or crontab on Linux to restart IBC at the end of the reset.

If you are enrolled in IBKR's security device scheme (ie Two Factor Authentication or 2FA) and don't want the hassle of having to do a full login every day, you could consider using the new autorestart mechanism introduced in TWS 974. However you cannot use this if you start TWS using IBC, so you would have to discontinue use of IBC for TWS.

heikohaensel commented 5 years ago

Hi, I experienced the same issue with my TWS 974 installation today. Is there a way to get the previous TWS version 973 somewhere? I didn't find it at the IB website.

rlktradewright commented 5 years ago

I can give you TWS 973, but I think it would be a bad idea to use it. For one thing, I don't know whether my copy is the latest version IB produced. But more importantly, since TWS 974 became the official 'latest' version, IB won't have been maintaining 973, so there could well be unfixed bugs in it.

So unless there's some new feature in 973 that you can't live without, I suggest you revert to the current stable version which is 972.

If you're sure you want 973, let me know and I'll put it somewhere you can download it from.

But bear in mind that you're going to have to face this issue head-on at some point, which means you'll either have to restart IBC every day, or run TWS without IBC and use the new TWS autorestart mechanism, which seems to work very well.