Documentum – CS 7.3 – Issue with dmqdocbroker

Beginning of this month, I was building a new environment in 7.3 P05 (using silent installation but this isn’t relevant here) and I found a strange behaviour from the dmqdocbroker so I wanted to share that. You will see below an error message “Input has special characters …”. This is specific to the CS 7.3 for which we opened a SR with EMC/OTX some months ago (beginning of this year during the first CS 7.3 tests we performed) but the outcome of this SR was that this shouldn’t have any impact on the proper behaviour of the docbroker so I didn’t blog about it back then but now, it might very well be linked to the issue I will discuss here.

So let’s talk about the issue with the dmqdocbroker. In this new environment, we configured several docbases and several docbrokers so that we can have separated applications. I will create another blog related to the projections (with another issue) so here I’m directly getting to the point. The issue I faced is that the first (default) docbroker was working properly, responding to the ping, listing all docbases, aso… But then when I created two additional docbrokers, these two docbrokers weren’t behaving in the same way…

To show that, I can simply execute the ping or getdocbasemap command for each docbrokers (for this example, I will use the following ports: first docbroker on 1489/1490, second one on 1491/1492, third one on 1493/1494). We are always using secure communications so that’s why you will always see the secure port below in the replies:

[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -p 1489 -c ping
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Targeting current host
$DM_HOME/bin/dmawk: Input has special characters ...
 source line number 624
Using specified port: 1489
Successful reply from docbroker at host (content-server-01) on port(1490) running software version (7.3.0050.0039  Linux64).
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -p 1491 -c ping
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Targeting current host
$DM_HOME/bin/dmawk: Input has special characters ...
 source line number 624
Using specified port: 1491
dmqdocbroker: Error returned from docbroker request:
[DFC_DOCBROKER_REQUEST_FAILED] Request to Docbroker ":1491" failed

[DFC_DOCBROKER_REQUEST_FAILED] Request to Docbroker ":1491" failed

[DM_SESSION_E_RPC_ERROR]error:  "Server communication failure"

java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -p 1493 -c ping
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Targeting current host
$DM_HOME/bin/dmawk: Input has special characters ...
 source line number 624
Using specified port: 1493
dmqdocbroker: Error returned from docbroker request:
[DFC_DOCBROKER_REQUEST_FAILED] Request to Docbroker ":1493" failed

[DFC_DOCBROKER_REQUEST_FAILED] Request to Docbroker ":1493" failed

[DM_SESSION_E_RPC_ERROR]error:  "Server communication failure"

java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$

As you can see, the request to the docbroker “:<port>” failed… But wait, why is there only the port here? Why is the hostname not mentioned in the error message? Well, that’s a pretty good question! For an unknown reason, the request to the first docbroker is working properly (ping successful) but then the request to the two others isn’t. It’s just like if the hostname was known for the first one but not for the others…

So since it is possible to specify which host to target, then what happen if you specify that?

[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ echo `hostname -f`
content-server-01
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ 
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -t `hostname -f` -p 1489 -c ping
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Using specified port: 1489
Successful reply from docbroker at host (content-server-01) on port(1490) running software version (7.3.0050.0039  Linux64).
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -t `hostname -f` -p 1491 -c ping
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Using specified port: 1491
Successful reply from docbroker at host (content-server-01) on port(1492) running software version (7.3.0050.0039  Linux64).
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -t `hostname -f` -p 1493 -c ping
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Using specified port: 1493
Successful reply from docbroker at host (content-server-01) on port(1494) running software version (7.3.0050.0039  Linux64).
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$

And here all three docbrokers are replying successfully… And in case you didn’t notice, even the message “Input has special characters …” isn’t displayed here. So for me, this shows that this message might very well be linked to this particular behaviour.

I’m not 100% sure what the issue is (I didn’t get time to open a SR for this yet) but if I had to guess, I would suggest you to read carefully the next blogs I will post today because this issue might be linked by the dash (‘-‘) (<– no this isn’t a smiley!) in the hostname.

I only showed the ping above but I can reproduce the same behaviour with the getdocbasemap for example:

[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -p 1493 -c getdocbasemap
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Targeting current host
$DM_HOME/bin/dmawk: Input has special characters ...
 source line number 624
Using specified port: 1493
dmqdocbroker: Error returned from docbroker request:
[DFC_DOCBROKER_REQUEST_FAILED] Request to Docbroker ":1493" failed

[DFC_DOCBROKER_REQUEST_FAILED] Request to Docbroker ":1493" failed

[DM_SESSION_E_RPC_ERROR]error:  "Server communication failure"

java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$ dmqdocbroker -t `hostname -f` -p 1493 -c getdocbasemap
dmqdocbroker: A DocBroker Query Tool
dmqdocbroker: Documentum Client Library Version: 7.3.0040.0025
Using specified port: 1493
**************************************************
**     D O C B R O K E R    I N F O             **
**************************************************
Docbroker host            : content-server-01
Docbroker port            : 1494
Docbroker network address : INET_ADDR: 03 52f 91f62f98 content-server-01 156.174.191.17
Docbroker version         : 7.3.0050.0039  Linux64
**************************************************
**     D O C B A S E   I N F O                  **
**************************************************
--------------------------------------------
Docbase name        : DocBase1
Docbase id          : 1000002
Docbase description : DocBase1 Repository
Govern docbase      :
Federation name     :
Server version      : 7.3.0050.0039  Linux64.Oracle
Docbase Roles       :
Docbase Dormancy Status     :
--------------------------------------------
Docbase name        : GR_DocBase
Docbase id          : 1000001
Docbase description : GR_DocBase Repository
Govern docbase      :
Federation name     :
Server version      : 7.3.0050.0039  Linux64.Oracle
Docbase Roles       : Global Registry
Docbase Dormancy Status     :
--------------------------------------------
[dmadmin@content-server-01 ~]$

If you don’t see this issue with a hostname that doesn’t contain any dash, please let me know! This would confirm that both issues are linked to that… As mentioned earlier, you will see in the next blog why I think this has something to do with the dash ;).