iiiiiiTroubleshooting ILS requires knowing how the system components and servers affect and interface with each other. The major troubleshooting tools are the Microsoft Windows NT event log, logs from other related services such as IIS, and any transaction logs associated with ILS.
Solving startup problems involves knowing which services should load and in what sequence. To resolve issues like missing DLLs or access problems, for example, requires an understanding of how the components work together and what the messages provided by the system mean.
If the server fails to boot for any reason, events should be logged in the Windows NT Application Event Log indicating why the server failed to boot. The most likely reason for a failure at startup is that the server encountered a problem reading from the registry, or that a required DLL cannot be found on the server. You should examine the event logs to see which event is logged.
Solving startup problems involves the following tasks:
ILS reads the registry at startup. As a result, the LDAP service must be started before an ILS query is received. If possible, start the LDAP service before starting up the WWW service.
Because the LDAP service starts up as a system process, its logon account has enough security rights to read the registry. When a Web query comes to the ILS server through its Web interface, however, the thread is running as an impersonated user; that is, as an anonymous logon account as specified in the WWW ISM service configuration. If this account has insufficient rights to read the registry, ILS fails at startup. As a result, all initialization must be done by the LDAP service as part of startup.
If you receive a "Module Not Found" error during startup, the most likely cause is that the installation is corrupt. Another possibility is that a file is missing or out of date. In either case, you should restart your computer, uninstall ILS, and run ILS Setup to reinstall the ILS software.
Troubleshooting security and access problems involves knowing the hardware, software, operating system, and data network associated with the service. Troubleshooting requires an understanding of how the components interface and involves analyzing and resolving issues, such as missing routers and encryption problems, based on messages provided by the service.
Solving security and access problems involves the following:
Using ISM LDAP Service Properties dialog boxes, check to make sure that the server is configured with the correct authentication options. Check to see which authentication option is selected: Anonymous, and Windows NT Challenge/Response. One result of incorrect authentication options is that users are having trouble accessing ILS anonymously, and you want to allow anonymous access. Check to make sure that the Anonymous check box is selected.
Note The Basic (No Encryption) item is provided with the overall LDAP service, but does not govern settings in ILS-only installations.
If you configured your server to enable Windows NT Challenge/Response, you must make sure that the correct Windows NT Authentication packages have been configured. This is a space-delimited list of package names. The most common selections are DPA and NTLM. Check these using the LDAP Properties dialog box in ISM.
If you cannot make connections to the server, it may be because you have reached the maximum allowable number of connections. Check the number of connections on the Services tab for LDAP in ISM. Make sure that it is set high enough to support your configuration.
If you have been using the software for some time and you suddenly have problems, try reinstalling. Under certain conditions, when the software is removed or uninstalled, certain files are not deleted until the computer is restarted. One of those files is Ulserver.dll.
When Internet services are running, uninstall marks certain files, including Ulserver.dll, for delete, but does not complete the deletion until after the computer is restarted. To avoid this situation, make sure that you stop all Internet services, including LDAP, NNTP, WWW, Gopher, FTP, Mail, and others before you uninstall any software. If you do encounter this problem, you can correct it by reinstalling the software after you restart your Windows NT server.
You will want to confirm that Microsoft NetMeeting or Intel Internet Phone clients are able to connect to your server. Microsoft NetMeeting or Intel Internet Phone connects to ILS via the ULP protocol from the Ulserver.dll file. This file is placed in your /Scripts virtual root by default.
To connect NetMeeting to your server
Go to the Call section and verify that Log off from Directory Service is listed. If the word "Logon" is displayed, this means that you are not yet logged on. If NetMeeting does not give an error, you are successfully logged on.
If you get an error message, use the following steps outlined in the following procedure.
To determine the cause of a logon error
Note For Intel Internet Phone to successfully connect to an ILS server, the Ulserver.dll file must be in a virtual root that is visible to Web browsers. The default virtual root is \Scripts.
ILS provides information regarding the clients logging on to the server. ILS does not establish the basic connection itself. Therefore, it is possible for connection problems to be on the client side. You can use the following procedures to check for origination of connection problems.
To check for connection problems
If each of these is successful, check the data.
To check the data
Note Sometimes "ip" is listed as "ipaddress."
If you conclude that the client computers are working properly, a server issue may be the cause of the problem. Reinstalling ILS may be necessary. For information about installing ILS, see Chapter 3, "Setting Up ILS."
Troubleshooting configuration problems involves knowing the server settings associated with the ILS service. This requires identifying and resolving improper registry key values using event messages and other indicators.
Solving configuration problems involves the following tasks:
Most ILS service settings can be configured through the LDAP Service Properties page in ISM. Depending on your hardware configuration and your expectation of system use, you can increase maximum connections and adjust other settings to maximize performance of your individual configuration.i
The maximum number of connections to the ILS server. You can set the Maximum Connections option on the Service tab for LDAP Service Properties in ISM.
If users are having problems accessing your ILS Web pages, this could be because the virtual roots have not been configured correctly. Check the WWW Service Properties Directories page in ISM. Make sure that your ILS HTML pages are in a directory that has a virtual root specified.
The ILS Web pages require the Active Server Pages script interpreter provided with Internet Information Server version 3.0. Make sure that you install this before running the ILS Web pages. If IIS version 3.0 is not installed, you will most likely see a "501 Not Supported" error when you try to execute a search, create, modify, or delete operation using the Web pages.
iiiiAlso, make sure that the directory has execute permissions. Without execute permissions, Active Server Pages script interpreter returns an "Access denied" message to the user when an action is performed through the Web pages.
Troubleshooting processing problems involves knowing how the LDAP service runs. You will have to analyze and resolve issues such as system overloads or runaway processes based on messages provided by the service and an understanding of the inetinfo processes.
The primary tool for solving processing problems is the Performance Monitor counters. The LDAP Server object contains counters for monitoring load activity on the ILS server. The counters are structured to account for both Web and LDAP queries.
Solving processing problems involves the following tasks:
The LDAP service performance counters are useful in determining the load on the ILS server. The following counters are particularly useful:
Other Performance Monitor objects that may provide useful data include the Memory and Process counters. When selecting the "Process" object, select the inetinfo process.
Because ILS stores its data in a RAM database, any data problems will most likely involve the data-refresh interval or the query itself. If users are having difficulty, here are some areas to check: