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Odd issues with R12 roll-out to production servers

Updated: 19 Jan 2010 | 3 comments
ludovic_ferre's picture
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A customer of mine implemented R12 (AKB #46763 [1]) in production after diligently testing the roll-up in test and pre-production environment.

However a couple of server (one in production, one in pre-production) completed the install but where left in a non working state due to the following error documented in the release notes [2]:

Installing R12 after NS 6.0 SP3 but before database configuration causes errors

If you install R12 after installing NS 6.0 SP3 but before the database configuration wizard has run, when you run the wizard there will be errors in the log:

Error=Altiris.NS.Security.Cryptography.KeyNotFoundException: The key 'NS.Installation.Legacy' does not exist.

The errors thrown in the log while configuring the Notification Server are because items try to initialize their data by using the encryption key before the key is installed. The failed item will re-initialize itself the next time it is used.

N/A 1863753

The issue for my customer was that these error where still occurring hours after the R12 installation, so the database configuration post roll-up installation must have missed a certain number of elements.

These errors are quite bad for production because the crypto key is used in the Altiris Agent configuration policies and this error prevents policies from being crafted properly i.e. no policies from the server can be delivered to the agents!!!

We did a roll-back to R10 and will complete further investigations this week to find out where this error comes from and how to avoid it in order to patch the server properly.

[1] http://www.solutionsam.com/solutions/6_0/altiris_ns_6_0_sp3_kb46763.exe
[2] https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=46763&p=1

Comments

ludovic_ferre's picture
22
Jan
2010
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 Okay, we got to the bottom

 Okay, we got to the bottom of this.

The issue was caused by poor database preformance so when the Aexconfig task ran to import items into the database it failed with a Sql timeout error.

This prevented the security keys to be imported in the DB and thus rendered the crafting of the client poicies impossible (as the server could no longer encrypt the credentials).

Ludovic FERRÉ
Principal Remote Product Specialist
Symantec 

1st Rule of Connect Club: Mark the post that helped you the most as a 'solution'. 2nd Rule of Connect Club:You must talk about Connect

whiggy's picture
29
Dec
2010
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So???? What was the solution?

I think I am experiencing the same issue.  Will reapplying the Rollup fix it?

ludovic_ferre's picture
01
Jan
2011
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Re-index the database and make some space

This was the solution, sorry I wasn't clear enough in the previous comment.

We got the DB maintenance plan reviewed and index fully rebuild before re-applying the hotfix. That solved it all.

Ludovic FERRÉ
Principal Remote Product Specialist
Symantec 

1st Rule of Connect Club: Mark the post that helped you the most as a 'solution'. 2nd Rule of Connect Club:You must talk about Connect