ERROR : NICI CCS: FATAL - Initialization. Control Cryptography Service

[zymrgy]

Netware 5.0 Sp6a with all the recommened post SP6a patches.

I think that this is related to a long going problem i have been having with
Arcserve 6.6. Last night I attempted another backup & like other times, the
server hung soon after it started the job. I know It hung right after the
job started by looking at the various .log files in the /arcserve folder.
This morning when I came in I had to "pull the plug" things seemed to start
up fine, then an error message came up. ERROR : NICI CCS: FATAL -
Initialization. Control Cryptography Services are not available. So I tried
to restart it again, the same message came up. The third time I downed the
server & then restarted it & it seemed to boot fine..kind of. It came up
with a prompt that said "mirrored devices are not working, check to see if
the power cord is plugged in & cables are hooked up. Do you wish to
continue?" ( that's not the exact error message, but close ) I said yes &
the server seemed to start up fine. I wanted to investigate the lack of
backup further by starting up Arcserve ( I took it out of the autoexec ) but
it came up with the error that it could find no valid devices. ( using
Canwpa (sp?) drivers )

I am coming up with more & more error as time goes on on this server.
Another error that pops up is:
Subnet cvm_a.cv has prior incomplete NDS transaction records but the subnet
is not being loaded with this server. All incomplet transactions will be
lost.

It is a single server setup with 2 NIC's, hence the 2 subnets. Both subnets
are currently working...at least it seems so. Noone is complaining anyways.

At this point I am thinking that reinstalling Netware from scratch might be
the thing to do. This is beyond the point of frustration.

for now, would it be advisable to reload NICI per

http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/10065538.htm

?

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Lou0686]

Hi,

The very first thing I would do is investigate your broken mirror. Sounds like the mirroring is out of sync and/or possible a bad drive/controller. Once this is verified/working I would recomment repatching the server and see if that fixes things.

If you suspect that Arcserver is the cause of the original probem, I would also not load it until your outstanding issues have been solved.

Once you establish that the server is once again running properly (wait a few days), then add Arcserve back into the mix to see if any error occur.

Lou

 

[zymrgy]

Ok, last night I rebooted the server & everything "seemed" to work fine.
Now the problem that shows up is every 1/2 hour I get the following message
on the console:

"The mirrored objects on this system are not all synchronized"

When I do a "LIST DEVICES" command all of the drives show up.

The SYS volume is duplexed using 2 adaptec 3940 controllers running 2
Seagate drives.
There is a IDE drive in the server also that is used for storage.

Would a VREPAIR fix the synchro message? Or, could one of the harddrives be
bad? If so, what utility can I run to test for this?

Thanks for all your help.

 

[Lou0686]

Hi,

Where you need to look depends on whether it is hardware or software mirroring. Since Novell is broadcasting the mirroring inconsistancy warnings, it should be software. Proceed as follows:

1. type NWCONFIG at the server console
2. go to "Standard Disk Options"
3. Go to "Mirror/Unmirror Disk Partitions"
4. At this point, are they In Sync or Out of Sync?
If it shows "Out of Sync" you will need to re-mirror. If you have never done this, do not attempt it because with NetWare you can mirror in the wrong direction and wipe out your data.

Lou