Common Troubleshooting steps for install, and uninstall, issues with the Data Insight SharePoint agent

Problem

This article describes items to remember when installing Veritas Data Insight (SDI) SharePoint Agent, describes the post-installation checks to verify successful installation and discusses steps to troubleshoot common errors that occur when installing and uninstalling SDI SharePoint Agent.

 

Solution

• NOTE: The SharePoint machine paths mentioned below, will vary based on SharePoint Server version

• SharePoint 2007:- C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\
• SharePoint 2010:- C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\
• SharePoint 2013:- C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\

A few things to remember before you install SDI SharePoint Agent:

• The SharePoint Agent installer package never upgrades itself. You must always uninstall an older version and install the latest version.
• Install SharePoint Agent with the farm administrator account.
• Install and uninstall logs are located in the %temp% folder. Log file names start with "i4j**".
• SharePoint 2007 and 2010 agent installers are different. Each installer can work for both 32-bit and 64-bit architecture.
• Ensure that SharePoint Timer service and SharePoint Administration service is running on all hosts in the SharePoint farm.
• Using SharePoint  Central Administration Console, go to the Servers in Farm page and identify that the listed servers are present, are in working condition, and are reachable from the SharePoint machine on which SDI SharePoint Agent will be installed.
• Make sure that a user is configured as per the web application policy as mentioned in the Veritas Data Insight Administrator’s Guide.
• Make sure that the site collection URL(s) are reachable from the collector machine.

 

 
Post -install checks:
Do the following to verify the success of the SharePoint agent installation:

• Navigate to the Solutions page on the SharePoint Central Administration Console to verify the status of the package named sdispwebsvc.wsp .  The status should be 'Deployed'. Any other status indicates some kind of error.

For troubleshooting, collect ULS logs and IIS logs (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\LOGS).  You must also collect the Data Insight logs from the Collector machine.

• Before collecting the ULS logs, set log level to Verbose, then collect the logs.
• How to set ULS log level to Verbose: Logon to Central Administration for your farm, click Operations. Under the Logging and Reporting section, click Diagnostic Logging. In the Event throttling section, set category drop down to ALL, Set the "Least critical event to report to the trace log" dropdown to "Verbose". Then click “OK”. 

Detailed post-install checks
Verify that the following files are present on all SharePoint front-end web server machines:

• Verify if the following packages are available in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) located at C:\Windows\assembly.
  • sdispwebsvc - This is the Data Insight agent web service DLL.
  • SDIEventHandler - This is the Data Insight handler DLL to trap CREATE events only.
•  Check C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Features. Look for the folders, SDIFeatureStapler and SDIEventHandler. These folders contain two files each viz. Elements.xml and Feature.xml . These features are installed as part of the agent deployment package. These features describe the DLL SDIEventHandler located in the GAC.
• Check C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\ISAPI. Look for 3 files called sdispwebsvc.asmx , sdispwebsvcdisco.aspx, and sdispwebsvcwsdl.aspx . These files describe the web service represented by sdispwebsvc.dll mentioned above.

Installation problems:

• SDI SharePoint Agent Installer returns an error for some reason.

• Check the post-install steps. Collect event viewer logs and ULS logs.
• Remove the package. Check if the package is removed cleanly.

• SDI SharePoint Agent Installer is stuck for a long time.

• Use the SharePoint Central Administration Console to verify the following:
  • Navigate to the Solutions page to check if the state is 'Deployed'.
  • If deployed, refer to the install log file to ascertain the cause of the installer being stuck.
  • If the state is ‘Deploying’, go to the Timer Job Definitions page and delete the Timer Job definitions for sdispwebsvc.wsp . If that does not move the state to ‘Deployed’, contact engineering.
  • If the state changes to 'Deployed' after terminating the Timer job, verify if the SharePoint feature, Data Insight Create Event Handler, is installed. Verify it by browsing to one of the monitored site collections URL. Choose Site Actions-> Site Settings-> Site Collections Features and search for the keyword 'SDI'. You should notice the feature SDI Feature Stapler in the 'Active' state.
  • If the features are not visible, install them using the commands:
    • stsadm –o installfeature –filename SDIFeatureStapler\Feature.xml
    • stsadm –o installfeature –filename SDIEventHandler\Feature.xml  
• Send the SDI SharePoint agent install log as part of the evidence.

 


SDI SharePoint agent uninstallation problems:

• If the SDI SharePoint Agent uninstaller is not able to remove the Data Insight agent cleanly, do the following:
  • Identify if the solution has been removed cleanly. All the files mentioned in the section “Detailed post-install checks" should have been removed.
  • Navigate to C:\Program Files\veritas\DataInsight\bin and execute the command SPManageFeature.exe –d . This command deactivates the Data Insight features in the farm. Note that this may take time depending on the number of web sites in the farm. If the SPManageFeature utility is not available on the SharePoint server, you can get it from one of the Data Insight installations.

Note: Run this utility as Farm Administrator.

• To remove features, run the commands  ‘ stsadm –o uninstallfeature –filename SDIFeatureStapler\Feature.xml' and 'stsadm –o uninstallfeature –filename SDIEventHandler\Feature.xml’.
• To remove the dll from GAC, navigate to C:\Windows\assembly, right-click sdispwebsvc and choose Uninstall. Right-click SDIEventHandler and choose Uninstall. Do this on all SharePoint machines.
• Delete all the remaining files mentioned in the ‘Detailed post-install checks’ section above. Perform this step on all SharePoint machines.
• Send the SDI SharePoint agent uninstall log as part of the evidence.

 


Test connection issues:

• When you click the Test Connection button for a Web Application in Data Insight Management Console, Data Insight attempt: site collection discovery, checks scanning, and checks auditing. Ideally, all three checks should succeed. The log files to look for are sharepoint_util.log , sharepoint_audit.log , sharepoint_scanner_0.log .

Addition of web application to SDI:

• After saving a web application, site collections are discovered and then added automatically. A couple of important things are done as part of adding each site collection:

• Enable auditing flags on the site collections
• Enable(Activate) SharePoint feature which is the DI Create Event Handler for all site collections

• If there are errors in the above step, those get logged in sharepoint_util.log .
• A periodic Commd job, SPEnableAuditJob, also does these things from the Collector machine.

Share discovery issues:

• Review the list of site collections on the Site Collections List page on the SharePoint Central Administration Console. Do the following:
  
  1. Click a listed site collection and verify if complete information about the site collection is displayed to the right of the page, as shown below:

Figure 1 - Sharepoint site collection

Error handling in web service:

• In case the sdispwebsvc web service throws an exception, that exception is encapsulated as a string and sent to the SDI client as part of the client initiated call. The client could be sharepoint_utilclient.exe , sharepoint_auditclient.exe or sharepoint_scannerclient.exe . The exception string is then logged in the respective log file.
• To improve the exception stack traces and be able to print code line numbers in the exception trace to enable better debugging by Engineering, do the following
• Go to C:\Program Files\veritas\DataInsight\pdb and pick the file sdispwebsvc.pdb .
• Type the following in the Windows 'Run' prompt C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL.
• Locate the folder sdispwebsvc and go in until you see the file sdispwebsvc.dll . Keep the file sdispwebsvc.pdb alongside it. Do this either on all the SharePoint web front-end servers or on the machine that is hosting the site collection for which you are noticing the problem. Invoke the command 'iisreset' on all front-end servers and reproduce the problem. The log files should now have exception traces with code line numbers in them