Microsoft Hotfixes may conflict with Unicenter Software Delivery 3.1 (and earlier) Agents

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We have recently become aware of a problem where a Microsoft hotfix may conflict with Unicenter Software Delivery (USD) causing it to stop functioning correctly. To date we are aware of two such hotfixes - Security Update (840987) (as detailed in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-032.mspx) and hotfix 840997 - which effects USD in this way. The details of this conflict are outlined below but it raises the possibility that future Microsoft hotfixes will, potentially, have the same effect. This advisory outlines the preventative steps that CA recommend you take in order to guard against this eventuality in the future.

Affected versions

3.1 and earlier.

Problem Symptom

After applying the hotfix on a Windows system Unicenter Software Delivery (USD) will stop functioning correctly.

The following symptoms will be observed:

1. The USD agent will not respond to server deployments.



2. sdctrl inst on the agent will give an error:
   
   "SDCTRL: Could not init communication with programs !"


3. Launching a manual jobcheck will fail with an error:
   
   "Failed to launch Job check in the computer account"


4. sdpgm stop will fail with an error:
   
   "Error 7: the control blocks have been destroyed"

Description of Problem

USD versions 3.1 and earlier map a memory-mapped file into the process address space at a specific location (0x7F000000), to allow multiple processes access to shared information. Hotfix 840987 on XP platforms rebases gdi32.dll at this same address and hence USD is unable to utilize this memory location, stopping USD from functioning correctly.

USD versions 4.0 and higher have been re-architected to remove the requirement of a specified address and therefore are not effected by this problem. It is also important to note that Microsoft Service Packs (e.g. XP SP2) do not effect the operation of USD as the rebasing of dlls only occurs with hotfixes.

Solution

The preferred and recommend medium term solution is to upgrade to USD 4.0 SP1 where you will benefit from the enhanced functionality the new release offers, for more details see http://www3.ca.com/Files/TechnicalDocuments/whats_new_software_delivery_4.pdf.

The USD agent component cannot be upgraded to 4.0 until all the upstream servers are first upgraded. Upgrading an Enterprise wide installation will require appropriate planning and verification, an immediate solution to this problem is to deploy this fix as detailed below.

This fix allows the memory location to be configured via a simple setting in the ASM.CNF file, thus allowing the address conflict to be avoided and USD to correctly function.

At the time of publication of this fix we know of two hotfixes, 840987 and 840997, which effect USD on the Windows XP platform. We expect that this number will increase in the future, therefore the immediate priority is to deploy this fix to all XP machines running USD components (Agent, Staging Server and Admin Consoles), before deploying these hotfixes.

We further recommended that this fix is deployed at a minimum to all Windows Agents such that if a conflict were to occur the situation could be proactively avoided by a simple configurational change.

With regard to USD Servers, whilst this problem currently only exists on Windows XP, it is recommended that the fix be applied to all USD Windows based Servers after suitable planning and verification tests have been completed.

QO61149 is now available to address this problem. It is applicable to all versions of Unicenter Software Delivery 3.1. Fixes for older versions of Unicenter Software Delivery will be available shortly.

Possible Deployment Mechanisms for QO61149 can be viewed by clicking here.

Lastly, CA advocates that you have in place a suitable strategy for verifying hotfixes in your Enterprise ahead of the deployment of those hotfixes to your systems.