How to use logs to determine duplicate GUID

  • 7004730
  • 22-Oct-2009
  • 23-Oct-2013

Environment

Novell ZENworks 10 Configuration Management with Support Pack 2 - 10.2 Hot Patch 1 with downloaded zenworks-registration.war

Situation

Due to previous bugs, or incorrect use of imaging (zac fsg -d not used prior to image) many workstations exist with duplicate local GUID information, causing communications problems.
 
To correct, zac reg -g  option can be used, (taking admin username and password) but to determine which devices have the problem can be difficult.  Depending on the auto-rename setting, these devices may present in ZCC as active only on the last device that communicated.  Note:  In 11.1 and later this may not fix due to reconciliation.

Resolution

In ZENworks 11, the ZCC will show an error when a workstation tries to register with invalid workstation credentials.  Example:
 
The managed device windows159-device with guid a0714cf95bcad142413edd6438e718f6and IP address(es) 192.168.0.54  failed to register due to invalid authentication info.
 
In 10.2.2 and later 10.x versions, there is additional logging in the registration web service.  To enable this logging, set the zone level agent logging to debug and above and refresh the server.  (note: this will affect all devices, but can be set to lower level at device folder).
 
After that, monitor services messages for registration requests that result in renaming.
 
For example (services-messages.log):
 
[DEBUG] [10/19/09 6:16:56 PM] [] [Registration Web Service] [] [This device already exists] [] []
[DEBUG] [10/19/09 6:16:56 PM] [] [Registration Web Service] [] [Device <guid> renamed from devicenameX to devicenameY] [] []
 
where GUID is the device GUID.  If the rename is reasonable (for example to reflect new IP address when naming rule includes it), this can be ignored.  But when it reflects different actual devices, then it can indicate that these devices should be checked for duplicate GUIDs (deviceguid file and/or ziswin ).
 
tailing the services message and grepping on the string "renamed from" and output to file can build a list.
 
If auto rename is disabled, the registrations will fail with either -28 or -34 in the logs.