WinDU PrincipalValidator problems introduced in v10.2 M030 ?

[NickD]

We have been testing the update from v10.2 M020 to v10.2 M030 on a cloned and rehosted copy of our production system, and have one last problem to solve with WinDU.  Before the update, WinDU reports no errors or warnings but after the update it reports a block of PrincipalValidator warnings, like the ones described in CS125299 and CS186012.

We have loaded the latest patch set M030-CPS09 but that does not fix the problem, so the statement in CS186012 that the problem was corrected in M030-CPS04 appears false.  We have been in discussion with our VAR and have had a support call open with PTC for 3 weeks.  I gather that other customers have the same or similar problems with M030 WinDU.

PTC have just declared a Critical Bulletin for CS 222868 and recommend an urgent update to M020-CPS17 or to M030-CPS09, which would be preferable to avoid our users from having to update their WGM installation and discard all their local cache folders twice.  https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS222868

Unfortunately PTC seem to be equally reluctant to solve the remaining problem with WinDU, which appears to be due to a change in how WinDU in v10.2 M030 checks the validity of Users & Groups in ADS, in particular the way it uses the binding user account credentials and/or the JNDI adapter url.

Has anyone else had this problem, and found the solution ?

Thanks in anticipation...

Nick

[BineshKumar1]

Apart from the warning in principal validator, do you see any disconnected principals? If you don't see any disconnected principal, you can probably ignore the error.

Thank you

Binesh Kumar

[NickD]

There are no disconnected principals (Users or Groups) reported in the Participant Administration page, and we know that CS186012 suggests ignoring the warning, but because something has changed between M020 to M030 which really ought to be fully explained or fixed (even if this needs another patch for WinDU), we are reluctant to commit our production system to the update.  If we simply ignore them, WinDU warning messages will loose their significance, and sometime in future there may be a more serious problem, perhaps blocking the next Upgrade.

As part of the support call we have turned on DEBUG logging and discovered the WinDU PrinciaplValidator test in v10.2 M030 appears to be using the wrong account details or Adapter URL, as we see a lot of lines like this in the MethodServer.log

     java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string "<binding_acct_password>@<ADS_server_FQDN>:3268"

PTC are asking us how we configured this to happen, but we are really asking them the same question !

Hence my posting in the PTC Community forum, to ask if anyone else has experienced the same problem and solved it, not just ignored it.

Nick

[BineshKumar1]

I understand your concern and I don't have a different opinion about getting a fix from PTC and about the significance of WinDU. I did not see this error in my latest upgrade to 10.2 witn ADS, so I would assume, this is a bug specific to some configurations. Did it re-occur in subsequent rehearsals or are you waiting for fix to do a rehearsal

[NickD]

We have done a series of rehearsals for the update (not an upgrade) from v10.2 M020 to v10.2 M030, some complete and some partial by using snapshots in VMware.

We have now worked through the support call with our VAR and PTC, and the results are effectively summarised in CS224136:

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS224136

We have been told that the related SPR4953048 may be used to improve the clarity of some other WinDU messages (eg. the one shown in CS125299).

I think this is a good result, and it shows that persistence pays off.  It has taken over 40 emails and 4 weeks, but we got there in the end.

Thanks again to all involved, your help & support is much appreciated.

Nick

[AndersKullenber]

Hi,

We are about to start an upgrade project, 10.1 to 11.0 and have seen the same issue in 10.1 with the to date latest windu patches.

Do you know if the issue affects the upgrade manager as well?

Will it fail on disconnected users even if there are non? I not sure if that scenarion was covered in the thread.

Thanks

Anders

[NickD]

I don't know if the issue will cause an ERROR or a WARNING when running the Upgrade Manager, as I have not tried that yet.

If it does, then PTC can almost certainly provide you with a patch, as they did for us to confirm there was no real problem in our database, but it was designated as a NON-production patch so we could only use it on our test server during rehearsal Updates (M020 -> M030), not on our production server.

I would have hoped that by now they would have rolled a fix into the WinDU / WinRU CPS updates, or at least made provision for it in the Upgrade Manager.

Please report back what you discover !