SMS 2003 Distribution Point Issues - Resolved!
Last week, I posed about an issue I had with my distribution points. I am pleased to say that the problem is now resolved.
There were actually a few issues, all of which contributed to a less-than-healthy package distribution environment. First and foremost, two files on the SMS server "went missing".
When I looked under my inboxes/schedule.box folder, I had over 480 pending jobs. Yikes. Although the distmgr.log file indicated no errors while "pushing" packages, the job files continued to accumulate and no work was actually being done.
With the help of PSS, I was able to find this knowledgebase article which referred to job file backups. Sure enough, just like the KB referenced, my sched.log file contained entries similar to the following:
JOB XXXXXX~ Updating status of minijob "Inter Site Replication".~ Need to generate send request for minijob.~ Skipping minijob. Could not retrieve the requset ID
And I was missing files from the UID subdirectory.
After following the KB instructions and creating new token .req and .job files and restarting SMS_EXECUTIVE, the jobfiles began being processed. Horray!
Unfortunately, the problem was not completely solved yet. I was still unable to copy several packages, all of which would still give me errors similar to the following in the distmgr.log file on the DP's in question:
Processing incoming file E:\SMS\inboxes\distmgr.box\INCOMING\BLAH.PKG.
Package XXXX requires a newer version (3) of source files and the new compressed files haven't arrived yet, current version is 2, skip E:\SMS\inboxes\distmgr.box\INCOMING\BLAH.PKG
Thanks to Matt Broadstock and this blog post, however, I was able to recreate .PCK files for the affected packages, and I'm happy to say that all the trouble packages successfully copied over the weekend!
Thanks again Matt, I owe you one!
UPDATE: After receiving a few emails informing me the link above is broken, I have updated it with Matt's new link to his post. Should it move again and anyone needs the solution, I'll breifly summarize here:
If you don't mind redeploying the package to all the DP's, the quickest method is to delete <PackageID>.PCK under the SMSPKG directory on your SMS drive, then change the source path of the package to something different and applying the changes (it doesn't even need to be a valid location), then immediately changing it back to the correct location and applying the changes again.
Doing this will force the package to be recreated, the version number will be incremented, and the new package will be sent to ALL DP's that currently have that package.