Troubleshooting Policy and Distribution Services

It's important that you know how to troubleshoot policy and distribution services. Common types of issues that you need to troubleshoot are covered in the next few sections.

Reviewing Server and Agent Object Associations

Make sure that the server is associated with the policies that you expect. You can determine the policies that the server is using by going to the server object and choosing the ZENworks tab and then looking at the Effective Policies page. On this page you can click the Effective Policies button, and ConsoleOne then displays all the policies that are associated either directly or indirectly with the server.

To see the effective policies for the TED objects, you can go to the TED object and look on the General tab page. This page displays the effective policy DN.

NOTE

Make certain to look for potential problems with a Container Policy Package if you are using only the container to associate the NDS or eDirectory server object. If you are not sure, it's a good idea to associate the NDS or eDirectory server object directly (as a troubleshooting step, not as an implementation design).

You can also check the policies that the agents are using by entering the policy list command on the ZENworks for Servers 3 (ZFS agent that ZFS.NCF loads) console. This displays the effective policies that the agent on that server is using. Additionally, you can enter policy status to display the order that is being used, as specified in the Container Policy. By doing these tasks, you can track down which policy the agents are using.

Subscriber May Timeout with Patching

The connection timeout for the subscriber (administered in the General Property page of the subscriber object) determines how long the subscriber waits to receive a package from the distributor. When sending a distribution with patching turned on, the distributor connects with the subscriber and figures out the details of the path, and then builds the patch on the distributor server. The building of the patch may take longer than the administered connection timeout of the subscriber, causing the subscriber to timeout while waiting for the distributor (while it is still building the patch). The distributor then notices that the subscriber has timed out the connection and stops building the patch, putting the distribution back into its queue for the next distribution cycle. This may continue to happen because each time the patch is building, the subscriber times out, causing the distribution to never be sent to the subscriber.

The current default timeout for the subscriber and distributor is 3,600 seconds. You may need to increase this in the property pages of the distributor and subscriber (see Chapter 6, "Setting Up Tiered Electronic Distribution").

Distributor Sends Only to Concurrent Connections

The system may distribute only to the number of maximum concurrent distributions in the distributor object. So, for example, if the maximum connections were set to 10, only the first 10 subscribers that receive distributions directly from the distributor will receive the distributions.

Set the number of maximum concurrent distributions in the Distributor object to the value of 0. The zero value signals that the distributor has no limit.

Alternatively, you may use a combination of parent subscribers to make sure that the distributor never attempts to distribute to more subscribers than set in the maximum concurrent distributions. Remember that the number of subscribers receiving from the distributor is the list of subscribers in each channel where a distribution is placed. But if a subscriber were pulling a distribution from a parent subscriber, it would not make a connection to the distributor and would not take up a connection number on that object. It would take up a connection to the parent subscriber object.

You can also use the priority settings for distributions to ensure that the highest-priority distributions are sent first in the channel. The priority of a distribution can be set at either High, Medium, or Low. Medium is the default setting when a distribution is created.

ZENworks for Servers 3 Policy Engine and Distributor State Cannot Find Database

The policy engine and the distributor may report that there was no database specified, or that it was specified incorrectly, when you have installed a ZENworks for Servers 3 database on the network.

The problem is that both these agents look for a Database Location Policy in a Service Location Package to find where the database is located. If this policy is not defined and associated with the agent objects or the server, the agents cannot find the database. See Chapter 5, "Setting Up Server Policies," for more information on this specific policy.

Extraction Fails on Subscriber Because Files Not Found

When the subscriber performs an extraction on a distribution that is done with the File Agent, each new distribution is only a delta from the previous distribution. To perform the extraction, both the delta and the previous version of the distribution must be accessible to the agent.

When the maximum number of revisions is reached, the File Agent builds a new "baseline" of the distribution that includes a complete copy of all the files. In some cases, when the deltas are large enough and the distribution is rebuilt frequently, the new baseline may arrive when the subscriber is still processing the previous delta.

The new baseline, when it arrives, deletes all previous delta files on the subscriber upon extraction. If a previous delta distribution of the same package is still being processed, the previous delta file will be gone because the baseline extraction has removed the files. This causes the subscriber to fail the delta extraction because the file was not found.

Either you need to set the maximum revisions so far out that you avoid this problem for a while, or you need to space the sending and extraction of the distribution apart sufficiently so that the subscriber has time to perform the extraction before the next distribution is sent.