Update: Issue with DSA Replica: The action site has not been created

1

Hello,

I have setup a new DSA replica between two BigFix servers.

The Servers have SQL setup with named instances and local SQL users with SA rights.

The FillDB is litered with:

Unable to connect to database: Database Error: The action site has not been created

Has anybody experienced this error in the FillDB of a new DSA setup? The primary server is working just fine – it’s just unable to replicate to the secondary.

I’ll be filing a PMR tomorrow… I looked on the forums but didn’t really find anything that seemed to match the issue i’m encountering.

Update: I have narrowed down what could be causing the issue in my reply below.

3

It looks like this might be due to incorrect replication settings.

It looks like this error occurs when the BigFix Primary server tries to pull from a replica server that hasn’t replicated yet. The Replica gets to the first step, finds out one of the tables that it is expecting data in is empty and just disconnects. It then seems to report to the primary the error, “The action site has not been created”. Maybe it is expecting row 0 of LOCAL_OBJECT_DEFS to be the creation of the action site?

Here is the error on the primary:

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:03 -0700 – 8660 – Replicating from BigFixReplica using sqlreplicationuser to log on BFEnterprise
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:03 -0700 – 8660 – select Version from DBINFO
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:03 -0700 – 8660 – select CreationTime from LOCAL_OBJECT_DEFS where ID = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:03 -0700 – 8660 – Replication failed for server ‘BigFixReplica’: Database Error: The action site has not been created.

Here is the error on the replica:

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – FillDB version 9.2.5.130 starting…
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – Connecting to local database with DSN:BES_bfenterprise Username:
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – Successful ODBC call returned:
[Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]Changed database context to ‘BFEnterprise’. (01000:5701)
[Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]Changed language setting to us_english. (01000:5703)
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – Successful ODBC call returned:
[Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]Changed database context to ‘BFEnterprise’. (01000:5701)
[Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]Changed language setting to us_english. (01000:5703)
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – select DatabasePropertyEx( db_name(), ‘collation’ )
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – select Version from DBINFO
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – Connected to local database.
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:06 -0700 – 4884 – select FieldContents from ADMINFIELDS where FieldName = ? and IsDeleted = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – OpenSSL Initialized (Non-FIPS Mode)
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – Using OpenSSL crypto library libBEScrypto64 - OpenSSL 1.0.1m-fips 19 Mar 2015
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select FieldContents from ADMINFIELDS where FieldName = ? and IsDeleted = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – Signature Algorithms: sha256, sha1
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – Download Algorithms: sha256, sha1
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select ServerID from DBINFO
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select FieldContents from ADMINFIELDS where FieldName = ? and IsDeleted = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select Certificate
from CERTIFICATES
where Subject = ?

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select FieldContents from ADMINFIELDS where FieldName = ? and IsDeleted = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select ServerID from DBINFO
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select Weights.SrcServerID,
Weights.DstServerID,
Weights.EdgeWeight,
Connectivity.IsConnected,
Connectivity.LastReplicationTime,
Connectivity.LastError
from REPLICATION_EDGE_WEIGHTS Weights LEFT OUTER JOIN
REPLICATION_EDGE_CONNECTIVITY Connectivity
on ( Weights.SrcServerID = Connectivity.SrcServerID
and Weights.DstServerID = Connectivity.DstServerID )
where Weights.EdgeWeight != 0
and Weights.DstServerID in ( select ServerID from REPLICATION_SERVERS where IsDeleted = 0 )
and Weights.SrcServerID in ( select ServerID from REPLICATION_SERVERS where IsDeleted = 0 )

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select ServerID, DNS, URL, IntervalSeconds from REPLICATION_SERVERS where IsDeleted = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – {call get_LastUsedSequence( ? )}
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – {call getComputerSequences( ?, ? )}
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select top 0 * from EXTERNAL_OBJECT_DEFS
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – {? = CALL sp_getapplock( ?, ? )}
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select P.Name, S.SiteID, P.ID, P.Fields from LOCAL_OBJECT_DEFS P, VERSIONS V, SITENAMEMAP S where P.ID = V.ID and S.Sitename = V.Sitename and P.Version = V.LatestVersion and P.ContentType = 5 and S.Sitename = ‘ActionSite’ and P.ParentID = 0 and dbo.fn_ExtractField( ‘IsReserved’, 0, P.Fields ) = ‘Yes’
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – select CreationTime from LOCAL_OBJECT_DEFS where ID = 0
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:02:07 -0700 – 4884 – Unable to connect to database: Database Error: The action site has not been created.

It looks like it’s trying to search inside of LOCAL_OBJECT_DEFS but because this is a new DSA and replication hasn’t occurred yet, the LOCAL_OBJECT_DEFS table is empty and this part of it fails.

In my lab environment this error goes away if I go through and double check all the replication registry keys are correctly set (for SQL authentication). Hopefully that will work in production!

More to come…

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4

@strawgate Have you seen that screen after installing secondary server (DSA)?

17.jpg542×595 88.2 KB

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5

The diagnostics tool looks a lot like that on the DSA server that isn’t replicating. But I’m not sure what that does for us

6

Though I’m assuming that you’ve done all the configurations correctly while implementing DSA. Couple of months ago I’ve also faced the same problem that you’re currently facing.
After Double check all the replication registry of both primary server and DSA that are correctly set, restarting the root server service of primary server works for me and the issue was resolved. You should also try that as well.

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7

I found the same in my lab environment so I’m give it a shot today.

Thanks for the response

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8

In my specific case the issue was routing related – we changed the entries in the Replication_servers table of the database to point to IP Address\SQL Instance Name and everything started working just fine.

It’s important to note that the Action Site missing message was because replication was working but in only one direction (my theory at least). the Primary server was trying to get data from the replica and the replica realized it didnt have anything yet – essentially the error occurs when it’s attempting bi-directional replication but the secondary doesnt have any data to share. The reason the secondary didn’t have any data was because it couldn’t resolve the correct ip for the primary. Replication was only working in one direction due to a complex network setup. The secondary couldn’t get data from the primary so it stayed in this uninitialized state.

It’s especially confusing because the log on the secondary only shows the action site missing message which leads you down the wrong rabbit hole!

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9

I have come across issues like this where the error message says one thing, but the core issue is something else.

This forum post will be very helpful for anyone having this issue in the future, so thanks for making it. I definitely find posts like this to be the most helpful.

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10

Need to point this out as a potential root cause for anyone possibly running into this problem who may stumble across this forum post while troubleshooting this issue:

DSA replication is failing with named instance databases
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21974540