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Troubleshooting User Move Problems with GroupWise 6 Running Support Pack 3

Articles and Tips: article

Greg Wheeler
GroupWise Worldwide Support Services
Novell, Inc.

01 Nov 2002


User move problems are categorized into two different areas--the admin move and the mail move. Our first objective is to determine where the move is failing. Log into the source post office as a test user and find the user you just moved in the address book. Find out in which post office the address book thinks that user belongs.

If the test user shows up in the target post office, then the admin portion of the move has completed. If the user still shows up as being in the source post office, then we have a problem with the admin portion of the move.

Admin Move Problems

Admin moves are usually caused by either a bad entry in the domain database or a message flow problem. The steps for performing the admin move portion are listed below:

  1. Through the ConsoleOne utility, the administrator selects the user(s) to be moved, right-clicks and selects Move.

  2. Next, the administrator selects the target PO (Post Office).

  3. If the move causes Internet email address changes, the administrator is prompted to allow or ignore the name changes. If the administrator allows the change, the new email address is written to the user record in the domain where the ConsoleOne snapin is connected. A message is also created to replicate this information to other domains.

  4. The owning PO attribute for the user is changed in the domain database.

  5. A replication message is sent to the target Post Office.

  6. The target POA's ADA (Administration Agent) thread will change the user's record in the host database and display a message stating that the user has been renamed.

  7. A replication message is sent to all remaining domains and post offices.

  8. The ADA thread of each remaining Post Office will change the user's record in the host database for that PO and display a message stating that the user has been renamed.

  9. When the ADA thread on the source POA has changed the user's record, it will create a message for a worker thread on the source POA to move the user.

Additional Steps to Resolve a Stuck Move

Here are some steps that can help resolve a move that is stuck in the admin portion:

  1. Verify that admin messages are flowing throughout the system. You can do this by changing a user's phone number and making sure that it updates the source and target address book. If it does not, first resolve the message flow problem before proceeding.

  2. Move the user back to the source domain.

  3. Run a 'Validate Domain' on the primary domain database. Starting with GroupWise 6 Support Pack 2, the Validate database routine contains new functionality that can clean up bad user information in the domain database.

    This check looks for any records belonging to a user that no longer exists on the post office and cleans them up if they do. These records could cause a user move to fail. If the user belongs to a secondary domain, rebuild the owning domain from the newly validated primary domain.

  4. Set all agent log levels to VERBOSE. This applies to the primary domain Message Transfer Agent (MTA), the source and target POA and MTA.

  5. Try to move the user again. If the move still fails, find out if it is failing in the admin move or in the mail move. If it is the admin move, then continue with the next step.

  6. At this point, we need to find out where the admin move is getting stuck. Check the log files for all agents that are involved in the move: The primary domain MTA, the source and target POA and MTA. Here we are looking for a log entry similar to the following:

    
ADM: Completed: Rename object in post office - User  Domain.PostOffice.User
(Administrator: (NDSTREE) AdminUser.Context, Domain: Domain)

  7. Look in the MTA log files for any error messages or any message with the username in it.

  8. If the move is still failing, move the user back to the original (source) post office and then disassociate and re-associate the GroupWise attributes on the NDS user object.

Try to move the user again. If the move still fails, then Novell support will likely want to get the domain database in-house to try to duplicate the issue.

Mail Move Problems

Now that we've looked at some of the admin move problems, let's now look at some mail move problems and their solutions.

  1. Starting with GroupWise 6 Support Pack 3, the Post Office Agent will have additional logging capabilities added to help administrators see the progress of user moves. The logging (in verbose mode) for a successful user move on the source POA appears below (some of the lines have been removed for the sake of clarity):


11:04:40 164 ADM: Completed: Delete object from post office -  Misc
Domain.PostOffice (Administrator: (NDSTREE) Adminuser.context,
Domain: GroupWise Domain)

11:04:40 164 ADM: Completed: Delete object from post office -  Misc
Domain.PostOffice (Administrator: (NDSTREE) Adminuser.context,
Domain: GroupWise Domain)

11:05:40 164 ADM: Completed: Rename object in post office -  User
Domain.PostOffice.Username (Administrator: (NDSTREE) Adminuser.context,
Domain: GroupWise Domain)

11:05:57 152 (.Move) Initiating: Username (User's FID)

11:05:57 152 (.Move) Sending Inventory List: Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 (.Move) Request for User Data Received: Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 (.Move) Folders Sent (11): Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 (.Move) Bag Records Sent (12): Testuser (hlw)

11:06:05 137 (.Move) Items Sent (6): Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 (.Move) AddressBook Components Sent (7): Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 (.Move) User Settings Sent (7): Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 Remote Request From: Username

11:06:05 137 (.Move) Purging User Data: Username (User's FID)

11:06:05 137 Delete user/resource: Username

Once the "Purging User Data" message is received, the user's mail in the source PO will be immediately deleted.

Note: The source POA now displays the user's FID in parenthesis. This is important because this is the FID on the source post office. The FID on the target post office may be different, although this is usually not the case.

  1. The destination POA (when verbose logging is enabled) will log the following for a successful user move with some of the lines removed for clarity:


11:05:27 190 ADM: Completed: Rename object in post office -  User
Domain.PostOffice.Username (Administrator: (NDSTREE) Adminuser.context,
Domain: GroupWise Domain)

11:05:27 190 ADM: Completed: Update object in post office - 
Domain.PostOffice (Administrator: (NDSTREE) Adminuser.context,
Domain: GroupWise Domain)

11:05:27 190 ADM: Completed: Update object in post office -  Misc
Domain.PostOffice (Administrator: (NDSTREE) Adminuser.context,
Domain: GroupWise Domain)

11:05:45 18E Processing admin task: Update Settings 

11:05:45 18E Successful merge of settings for Username

11:05:45 18E  Processed OK

11:05:45 18E Processing admin task: Update Settings 

11:05:45 18E Successful merge of settings for Username

11:05:45 18E  Processed OK

11:05:57 17A (Move.) Inventory List Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Requesting User Data: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Folder Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (24): Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Bag Record Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (23): Username

. . .

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (20): Username

. . .

11:06:05 18E (Move.) AddressBook Component Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (12): Username

. . .

11:06:05 18E (Move.) AddressBook Component Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (8): Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) AddressBook Component Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (7): Username

. . .

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (2): Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) User Setting Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Progress. Items remaining (1): Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) User Setting Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Transfer Complete. All Items Received: Username

11:06:05 18E (Move.) Sending Purge Notification: Username

11:06:05 18E  Processed OK

The target POA displays a countdown of all items remaining to be moved. This provides an easy way for administrators to tell whether or not a move was successful. The administrator can search the logs for "Sending Purge Notification" and make sure that each user was successfully moved.

If a user move was not successful, the administrator can use the GroupWise 6 Inventory List (Ilist) utility to help determine the next step to take. The Ilist utility will show the number of items that are remaining to be moved, along with some basic information about each item (Subject, date/time, sender, etc.) The Ilist utility is available for download here: http://support.novell.com/servlet/tidfinder/2963477

If the Ilist utility shows that there are important items left to be moved, the administrator can move the user back to the source post office, have the user log in and archive any essential items. After the user archives the items in question, the administrator can then move the user again.

Alternatively, if the administrator has defined a restore area for that post office, the user can use the File | Open Backup feature within the client to retrieve any items that may not have made it through the move process.

If the administrator decides that it's not worth the effort to archive/retrieve the items from the source post office, Ilist can be used to delete the remaining items in the user's inventory list and to request a retry on the move. Once there are no remaining items in the inventory list, the POA will declare the more to be complete and will send a purge notification to the source POA.

Additionally, the administrator can use the "send purge" button to manually mark the move as completed, and to remove the user's data from the source post office. The functionality of the Ilist utility will be included in the GroupWise snapins for ConsoleOne as part of the Hawthorn (GroupWise 6.5) release.

Note: At the time of writing, the GroupWise 6 Support Pack 3 had not been released, but it may be by the time you read this article. To see if SP3 is available, go to http://support.novell.com and select Product Updates (patches & fixes), then follow the Groupware link under Product Categories. If you want to download the latest GroupWise 6 agents, including the logging enhancements mentioned in this article, go to http://download.novell.com/index.jsp?product_id=&search=Search&build_type=SDBuildBean&families=2650&version=4674&date_range=&keywords=&x=38&y=13 .

* Originally published in Novell AppNotes

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