topic Re: DRD sync fails in Operating System - HP-UX

DRD sync fails

Tom Ward_1 — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:07:42 GMT

Hi,

I got this failure with "drd sync"
* Locating System Images
* Identifying Inactive System Image for synchronization
* Selected inactive system image "sysimage_001" on disk
"/dev/disk/disk11".
* Validating System Image to mount for synchronization
* Accessing Inactive System Image for synchronization
* System image: "sysimage_001" on disk "/dev/disk/disk11"
* Identifying Files to Be Synchronized
* Getting list of newconfig templates from the Installed Products
Database.
ERROR: The files to be synchronized cannot be identified.
- Reading the XML file failed.
- Unable to parse "/var/opt/drd/registry/fileSystemState.xml".
* Identifying Files to Be Synchronized failed with 1 error.
* Identifying system image to be unmounted
* Unmounting Inactive System Image
* System image: "sysimage_001" on disk "/dev/disk/disk11"

From checking the xml file it looks like a non-printing character in a file name can kill "drd sync". Can anyone confirm this?

Re: DRD sync fails

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:39:22 GMT

Shalom,

DRD is fun. Keep repeating that.

ll /var/opt/drd/registry/fileSystemState.xml

Make sure file exists, if not touch it.

swlist -l bundle DynRootDisk

# please Post.

drd status

# please post

SEP

Re: DRD sync fails

Tom Ward_1 — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:08:56 GMT

Found the problem. Seems like a bug to me.
drd sync can't deal with non-printing characters. A file name had non-printing character in it. It shows as ^L in vi and \010 with ls -lb.
i.e. drop_dev_user_L^HKALIKAV.lst

It's not uncommon on development systems.

Removed the offending file and entry in fileSystemState.xml, and sync works.

Viewed xml file in firefox and it led me right to it.

Re: DRD sync fails

Jeffrey Heneks_2 — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:22:29 GMT

We got bit by this one too. I had way too many files to find the problem by inspecting in a browser. What I did was do a strings on the file to another file. Then compared the original file to the strings output file. There was one line that was different. That was the bad file.

Re: DRD sync fails

Tom Ward_1 — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:02:25 GMT

Find any files with unprintable characters. Tips for tracking them down in the message thread.

Re: DRD sync fails

Jeffrey Heneks_2 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:00:17 GMT

There is a bit more to this bug. Not only is it unprintable, but other printable characters that they are not protecting against. I had this problem again. My diff with the strings output didn't find anything. Eventually I found a file that had a '<' character in it that was choking drd sync. It must have been a file created when trying to debug a performance manager agent problem years ago. The file name was:
/var/opt/OV/tmp/hp.trc.shm.TraceCfg.

My guess is that files with quotes or back slashes and any of those other characters that you are supposed to guard against when excepting user input would also choke drd sync.

Tom, have you file a bug report for this? Clearly, this is a bug.

Re: DRD sync fails

Tom Ward_1 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:57:28 GMT

Several things can go wrong with DRD, but it's a great tool to reduce down time when it works properly.

From the case I had open:
Wtec has filed a CR with labs to get this fixed in future release of DRD software (no estimated time of release available yet). Thanks for bringing this to our notice, it will help us make DRD more robust and useful for our customers.