Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition

Running Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition version 12.0.1001.95 on Microsoft SBS 2003 R2.

All was fine.

Suffered power outage and UPS had insufficient juice to enable server to gracefully shut down.

Now can't start Symantec Embedded Database service.

Symantec Protection Center starts and stops. Won't stay started.

Checked Start-> Administrative Tools -> Data SOurces (ODBC)

<tabs> SystemDSN ->SymantecEndpointSecurityDSN <click-click>

<tabs> Login -> UserID = dba and password is correct

<tabs> ODBC -> Test Connection <click>

<error message> "Connection failed: Database server not found" (without the double quotes).

Have full system backup (produced by NTBackup) but don't know what is wrong. Any ideas?

Check if Embedded datadase service is running. If not - try to start it.

You have SPC database backup just in case, don't you? :-)

If you are unable to manually start the database service, you may be able to run a repair install of the SPC. If that does not resolve the issue I suspect there is likely database corruption that occured.

If you have a database backup you can restore that and retain at least the data that was available at the time of backup. If you do not have a database backup you would need to start with a new install.

I agree with Kurt - that's why I asked about DB backups :-)

If you do not have backups, please let us know - we will give you some hints how to perform recovery.

Hi, sorry I have been away for a few days.

I can't manually restart the database service. I do have a back up as part of the system daily NTBackup volume shadow backup schedule.

To Kurt's point, how do I run a "repair install of the SPC" please?

have you tried doing the repair of SPC before performing a fresh install.

go to add/remove programs , select spc select repair check if that fixes it.

reinstall links can be found in this discussion

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/re-install-protection-center

You can always try to run a repair but is the database if damagged, it won't fix it. Please also try to verify DB integrity with dbvalidator tool:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/2326c6a13572aeb788257363002b62aa/a5f9153ff7a6add0882574430060dc04?OpenDocument

I followed both recommendations as follows.

1) add/remove programs SPC repair - completed without any messages or errors.

2) dbvalidator run and the log file produced which does contain errors relating to the database.

I also downloaded and ran the support tool from Symantec which has produced a 6.7MB .sdbz file (which I have no idea how to analyse) but which I have attached as a .zip file as well.

I would really like to avoid a reinstall if I can as, in the past when I have had to do that, it has really caused me major headaches.

Any other advice would be most gratefully accepted.

Attachment(s)

dbvalidator.log_.zip   2 KB 1 version

SATURN__2010_12_27__18_34_48_LP_Full.zip   6.55 MB 1 version

Do you have backup of your database? If DB is corrupted, you won't have to reinstall everything from the scratch.

I retrieved the sem5.db and the sem5.log files from the last good backup.

I disconnected my server from the Internet.

I stopped all Symantec services.

I replaced the corrupted sem5.db and sem5.log files with those recovered from the backup, checking that they were not marked as read-only.

I restarted all the Symantec related services! They all started successfully this time.

I reconnected my server to the Internet.

Job done. Excellent. Everything works fine and all services and clients are now back under control.

This is why it is good to have backup of your database, although replacing sem5 db file is not recommended.

Please have a look on:

Best Practices for Disaster Recovery with the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH102333

How to back up, restore, and/or move the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM) and embedded Database to another disk or system
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH102738

You may also want to mark this thread as solved to help others in the future :-)