Distributions fail after moving distributions from a NetWare to an OES Linux Distributor

ZENworks Server Management allows distributions to be moved from one distributor to another, however when moving distributions from a NetWare based Distributor to a OES2 Linux based distributor, distributions will either get corrupted or fail to distribute.

File distributions fail to gather, “ERROR - creating the distribution file ”

NAL distributions with MSI applications could delete files on the subscriber

The ability to move distributions is designed to be used for load balancing, if a single server has too much load, a second server can be installed and some distributions can be moved to the new server. For the move to work properly the path to the distribution files and the path to the source files should be the same on both servers.

When moving distributions from a NetWare based Distributor to a Linux based Distributor (even if the files are stored on the same volume) the distributor will look at the path on the system and doesn't recognize the path that has been used to build the existing revisions. "DATA:\apps " on the NetWare server will be "/media/nss/data/apps " on the Linux server.

When moving distributions from a Distributor on NetWare to a Distributor running on Linux, do not copy the existing distribution files and let the distributor start with a clean baseline distribution.

See https://www.novell.com/documentation/zenworks7/sm7admin/data/alqt6nf.html#bpy6duu "3.4.7 Reassigning a Distribution to Another Distributor" in ZSM7 documentation