Environment
Novell NetWare 5.0
Situation
How to troubleshoot SLP with Directory Agents (SLPDA).
Resolution
If possible, have only 1 DA in the network to simplify troubleshooting. It is easier to get 1 DA working rather than 2 or more.
1. Place this DA on the side of the WAN that has the most servers/clients.
2. Configure a named scope (it is best not to use the default unscoped scope).
3. Configure the SYS:\ETC\SLP.CFG file on every server to point to this one DA. Leave the DA discovery setting at the default of 15. Leave the SLP TCP setting at the default of OFF.
4. Make sure you are running the latest version of SLP. As of this writing the current version is SP4. These files are found in the c:\nwserver directory.
5. Enable debug on the server that is going to run SLPDA.NLM by entering SET SLP DEBUG = 124. Send this debug information to a file by entering SLP OPEN SLP.LOG. Load SLPDA on this server and then reboot all the other servers. Once all servers come up, close the log by entering SLP CLOSE. The log file will be at SYS:\SLP.LOG.
6. What should you see in this log file? You should see entries that begin with DA_SREG and DA_SREG_ATTR. After this will be the data of these Service Registrations. This is the information that is sent from each server to the DA registering these services with the DA. You should see these for NDAP.NOVELL and BINDERY.NOVELL services. The NDAP.NOVELL represents a particular NDS partition in the tree. You will see one of these per partition in the tree no matter how many servers hold a copy of that partition. The BINDERY.NOVELL service represents NDS running on a particular server. You should see one of these for every server.
7. Display SLP Services. Running this does not always show every service in the network that is available. A more certain way to know what the DA has registered is to dump the DA cache. You do this by entering SLPDA /D after the DA has been running for some time. This information is sent to the debug log so you may want to enable the log file before doing this. This will give you the complete list of services that the DA has in its cache.
8.Display SLPDA. Do this on every server. It should show the address of the DA and how it obtained that address. If this shows up with a status of inactive then that server is having a problem communicating with the DA. Troubleshoot this by first checking IP connectivity (ping the DA). If that is fine, try getting a LAN trace of the server loading and see if it is sending out a request for the DA. This should be a unicast packet if there is an address configured in the SLP.CFG.Check to make sure that there is a carriage return after each DA IPV4, x.x.x.x (ip address) line
9. If a server appears to be having a problem communicating to the DA or any other server, make sure SLP is bound to TCP. You can do this by unloading SLPTCP and then reloading it. SLP will display a message for every IP interface that it is binding to.
10. Check the scope in NWADMIN. After all servers are up and registered you should be able go into NWADMIN and look at the SLP Scope Unit and see all the services. There will be one object for each service. If you do not see a particular service, check the debug log for entries that begin DDCCreatEnty and DDCModifyEntry. These are the calls to NDS that actually create these objects. You should see these in the log after the DA_SREG and DA_SREG_ATTR. If you do not see these, check NDS error codes in the log and check the health of NDS.
11. You can force a server to re-register with the DA by entering SET SLP RESET = ON then do SET SLP RESET = OFF. After a couple minutes you should see the server send the service registrations to the DA.
1. Place this DA on the side of the WAN that has the most servers/clients.
2. Configure a named scope (it is best not to use the default unscoped scope).
3. Configure the SYS:\ETC\SLP.CFG file on every server to point to this one DA. Leave the DA discovery setting at the default of 15. Leave the SLP TCP setting at the default of OFF.
4. Make sure you are running the latest version of SLP. As of this writing the current version is SP4. These files are found in the c:\nwserver directory.
5. Enable debug on the server that is going to run SLPDA.NLM by entering SET SLP DEBUG = 124. Send this debug information to a file by entering SLP OPEN SLP.LOG. Load SLPDA on this server and then reboot all the other servers. Once all servers come up, close the log by entering SLP CLOSE. The log file will be at SYS:\SLP.LOG.
6. What should you see in this log file? You should see entries that begin with DA_SREG and DA_SREG_ATTR. After this will be the data of these Service Registrations. This is the information that is sent from each server to the DA registering these services with the DA. You should see these for NDAP.NOVELL and BINDERY.NOVELL services. The NDAP.NOVELL represents a particular NDS partition in the tree. You will see one of these per partition in the tree no matter how many servers hold a copy of that partition. The BINDERY.NOVELL service represents NDS running on a particular server. You should see one of these for every server.
7. Display SLP Services. Running this does not always show every service in the network that is available. A more certain way to know what the DA has registered is to dump the DA cache. You do this by entering SLPDA /D after the DA has been running for some time. This information is sent to the debug log so you may want to enable the log file before doing this. This will give you the complete list of services that the DA has in its cache.
8.Display SLPDA. Do this on every server. It should show the address of the DA and how it obtained that address. If this shows up with a status of inactive then that server is having a problem communicating with the DA. Troubleshoot this by first checking IP connectivity (ping the DA). If that is fine, try getting a LAN trace of the server loading and see if it is sending out a request for the DA. This should be a unicast packet if there is an address configured in the SLP.CFG.Check to make sure that there is a carriage return after each DA IPV4, x.x.x.x (ip address) line
9. If a server appears to be having a problem communicating to the DA or any other server, make sure SLP is bound to TCP. You can do this by unloading SLPTCP and then reloading it. SLP will display a message for every IP interface that it is binding to.
10. Check the scope in NWADMIN. After all servers are up and registered you should be able go into NWADMIN and look at the SLP Scope Unit and see all the services. There will be one object for each service. If you do not see a particular service, check the debug log for entries that begin DDCCreatEnty and DDCModifyEntry. These are the calls to NDS that actually create these objects. You should see these in the log after the DA_SREG and DA_SREG_ATTR. If you do not see these, check NDS error codes in the log and check the health of NDS.
11. You can force a server to re-register with the DA by entering SET SLP RESET = ON then do SET SLP RESET = OFF. After a couple minutes you should see the server send the service registrations to the DA.
Additional Information
Formerly known as TID# 10024588