ALTERDBSPACE service fails

  • 3377919
  • 22-Aug-2007
  • 30-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell ZENworks 7 Desktop Management Support Pack 1 - ZDM7 SP1 Inventory

Situation

To tell ZENworks that database files have been moved, it is necessary to run the alterdbspace service (seehttps://www.novell.com/documentation/zenworks7/dm7admin/data/af4erl9.html#a5oxkye ). But when you do do, you see a message:
AlterDBSpace: ASA Error -211 Not allowed while 'MW_DBA' is using the database
AlterDBSpace: 2708 The database is being access in DBA mode
Stop the Storer service and try again.
If you stop the service, and try again, the problem still remains.

Resolution

Fixed in ZENworks 7 Desktop Management Service Pack 1 Interim Release 3a, available at https://download.novell.com

There is a workaround, but involves several steps.
  1. Amend mgmtdbs.ncf to replace -ti 0 with -ti 1
  2. stopser *
  3. Unload sybase
  4. load sybase (ignore error messages)
  5. startinv.ncf
  6. stopser storer (there may be a delay of several minutes before the storer is stopped, depending on where in the 300 second wait loop the process is)
  7. startser alterdbspace wait for it to finish (should only take a few seconds)
  8. stopser *
  9. unload sybase
  10. Amend mgmtdbs.ncf to replace -ti 1 with -ti 0
  11. mgmtdbs.ncf
  12. startinv

Additional Information

The problem is that the storer service does not free up its connection to the database when it's stopped, so it's necessary to wait for the connection to timeout (the default for this is 400 minutes!)