Environment
Novell Identity Manager - Remote Loader
Novell Identity Manager 3.5
Novell Identity Manager 3.0
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Situation
In some rare situations the Remote Loader (RL) running the Microsoft Active Directory (MAD) driver has been found to crash when the network is disconnected during operation. Reproduction requires SSL between the Identity Manager (IDM) Engine and RL be configured, that heartbeat be configured as well, and is easiest after synchronization has already taken place. Using SSL between the IDM Engine and RL is recommended in most scenarios and used often but the heartbeat feature is rarely implemented and unless policy is used to work with it doesn't cause any changes to the environment and as a result is rarely used. When the network connection is taken down forcefully the Remote Loader and Engine must both timeout so that they cease their retries. When the connection is reestablished and synchronization resumes the Remote Loader will simply stop working. Setting the service to automatically restart on a failure may cause it to resume operation.
Resolution
This issue only happens during a prolonged network failure from which the TCP stack cannot recover gracefully. This crash does not take place when the Engine or RL is stopped normally, when SSL is not in use or when Heartbeat is left in its default disabled state. To prevent this failure the network between the Engine and RL should be as reliable as possible.
This has been fixed in IDM v3.6
