[ Teknoglot ]

What do you do when you cannot delete a file or folder on a windows server?

Check the file permissions! And if that doesn’t help?

Check the share permissions! Yes, if it is a shared folder. And if that doesn’t help?

Check the file ownership! Great! But then what?

Well, the file could be in use, and then you would have to shut the locking process down and perhaps kick a user out. In a really bad scenario it could also be a symptom of a broken filesystem, a reserved filename (like “lpt1” or “PRN”) or even an invalid name (silly things like a space in the beginning or the end of a filename).
Another possible reason could actually be that the path to the file or folder is too long. You won’t actually get an error telling you that the filepath exceeds the 255 characters Windows can handle but a simple “Acces Denied”.

There are some, more or less tedious, work-arounds for the problem. Like renaming, starting from the root, all the directories to shorter ones or using the old DOS (8.3, like “dokume~1.doc”) names that windows can auto-generate for you. Personally, I have two favourite ways of handling this.

1. Map the parent-directory of the file/folder you are trying to access/delete as a network drive and access your files that way.
   This is particularly useful if the folder you are trying to access a DFS-share or perhaps a share on the central fileserver filepaths like “\\servername01\Central Projects\Central Services\IT Department\Develop Methods for Automatically Deploying New Central Servers\2.2.1 Auto-Deploying SQL-Server 2005 Cluster\Documents\Preparations\Whitepapers\SQL Server 2005 Failover Clustering White Paper.doc”
2. Create a new share to a folder further down the hierarchy. This works locally too if you are logged on to, say, SRV01, you create a new share on “D:\Fileshares\Central Projects\Central Services\IT Department\Develop Methods for Automatically Deploying New Central Servers\” called “Autodeploymethods” and access it from “\\SRV01\Autodeploymethods\”. That way the filepath doesn’t exceed 255 characters.

Now. When designing fileservers, you really should think about how deep the filepaths may get. This is especially true on DFS-shares since you might have to deal with the full FQDN too, and not only the actual folder structure. Many big corporations I know uses “codes” for departments and assign a project ID (quite simply a number or maybe an abbreviation) to each project and uses theese for the fileshares too. Another scenario that could lead to similar problems are intranet sites where users can create and manage their own subsites and where filenames and folders are not stored in a database.

I have only seen this phenomena on Windows systems so far, and I’ve actually used a linux Live-CD on occasion when admin access is denied.

Read More:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320081

This update hasn’t showed up in the MP Catalog yet, but the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update can be downloaded here.

Besides SUSE 11 support, here’s the short overview.

The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update adds fixes for a defunct process issue on Unix/Linux Servers, as well as, adds support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions) and Solaris Zone support.
Feature Summary:
The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update supports the monitoring of Unix/Linux Servers including:

• Monitoring of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 servers (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions)
• Support of Solaris Zones
• Fix for defunct Process issue
• The Cross Platform Agent may not discover soft partitions on Solaris systems. Therefore, the disk provider may be unloaded, and the Cross Platform Agent may stop collecting information from the system disks.
• The Cross Platform Agent may not restart after the AIX server reboots.

The latest versions of all the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unix/Linux agents are included in this update.

Perfect timing, I must say, since I really need this today.

Update:
This is no small MP-update, which probably is the reason that we do not find it in the MP Catalog, but a ~250MB OpsMgr R2 Software Update. You need to run this on all Operations Manager Servers (RMS/MS, GW?) since it actually updates many of the agent Cross Platform binaries. It does add a new MP för SUSE 11 that you have to import from disk if you need it.

So, the installation goes somewhat like this:

1. Install the Software Update (pick the right Architecture) on all OpsMgr R2 Servers
2. Import the SUSE 11 MP if necessary
3. Re-discover your Unix/Linux machines.

Files updated in this update for R2:

• .\Microsoft.Enterprisemanagement.UI.Administration.dll (Version 6.1.7043.1)
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.aix.5.ppc.lpp.gz
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.aix.6.ppc.lpp.gz
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.hpux.11iv2.ia64.depot.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.hpux.11iv2.parisc.depot.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.hpux.11iv3.ia64.depot.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.hpux.11iv3.parisc.depot.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.rhel.4.x64.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.rhel.4.x86.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.rhel.5.x64.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.rhel.5.x86.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.sles.10.x64.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.sles.10.x86.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.sles.9.x86.rpm
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.solaris.10.sparc.pkg.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.solaris.10.x86.pkg.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.solaris.8.sparc.pkg.Z
• .\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\scx-1.0.4-248.solaris.9.sparc.pkg.Z

Files added:

• Microsoft.Linux.SLES.11.MP

All in all, the update contains the following fixes:

• KB969342
• KB973583
• Q954049
• Q956240

I’ve wrestled a bit with a critical status on one of the Organization States at a clients site that wont go back to green despite all the underlying monitors have gone back to green. And apparently I am not alone on this one. Others, like me, has read and re-read the MP-guide i search for a monitor/rule/discovery for overrides forgotten, and I don’t know how many times I’ve made a small change and tried resetting the health once again. Anyhow.
Marius Sutara posted an answer on TechNet forums last week with a “fix” (-ish), or rather the acknowledgement that the problem is not a 40c. The problem might be related to other MP as well, but I’ve only seen it on the new Exchange MP so far. In that same post, Pete Zerger provided some links to two nifty little tools that will help you reset the health of the monitor.

In case you wonder why on earth I post when there’s allready a “solution” out there; Pagerank, baby!
Not for me, but for the forum post making it show up earlier on google.

Microsoft released an updated MP (v6.1.7533.0, released on 10/8/2009) for monitoring the health the Operations Manager components.

Most significant updates, according to me, would seem to be:

Fixed an issue that was previously preventing all rules related to agentless exception monitoring from generating alerts.

Added the rule “Collects Opsmgr SDK Service\Client Connections” to collect the number of connected clients for a given management group. This data is shown in the view “Console and SDK Connection Count” under the folder “Operations Manager\Management Server Performance”.

Updated a number of monitors and rules to ensure that data is reported to the correct management group for multihomed agents.

Fixed the configuration of the rule “IIS Discovery Probe Module Execution Failure” to so that the parameter replacement will now work correctly for alert suppression and generating the details of the alert’s description.

The rest is mostly polishing, fine-tuning and complementary updates. Nothing really ground-breaking here, but still a welcome update.

Download at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61365290-3c38-4004-b717-e90bb0f6c148

According to the OpsMgr Team blog, Microsoft wants to know what you think about their SQL Server MP. It’s really hard to come by a better opportunity to express your feelings and desires about monitoring SQL Server, so don’t miss this one out.

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/09/25/sql-management-pack-survey-live-on-connect.aspx