Servers Not showing Under server container

[Guest]

Hi,

We have been using Hyena to manage are AD installation for 6 months now with very few problems, in the last week we have lost the ability to export any information out of the domain. I have also noticed that the Server container only has one server name in it now.

This is the only server we can get any export for. Can you please help as it is beginning to become a problem.

[cmccullough]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

The Export function and the Servers folder both get their information from the Windows browse list.

I would suspect a browsing issue on your network, or possibly the computer you have Hyena installed on.

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

We have 10 machines using Hyena, 5 of these machines can run exports and 5 can't, they are all on the same network segment.

any ideas

[kstanush]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Expand the computers object for the domain, and see if these computers (servers) are greyed out. If so, then they are not on the browse list. You might also be able to do a Net View command at the command prompt to see if they show up.

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

These servers are not grayed out, I can query them and bring up the properties with no problem.

[cmccullough]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Did you try the NET VIEW command?

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Why is Hyena retreiving info from the Browse list - shouldn't it be using LDAP to enumerate the domain ?

Also, all the servers are listed in the computers folder - as if Hyena cannot identify that the computer type.

[kstanush]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Hyena can't use LDAP to query the domain for specific computer types, as that query would be extremely slow. I am not sure that the directly stores anything on a server, however, that is different from a workstation in the directory. But even if it did, the query to get the data would not perform well.

The 'servers' object is a hold-over from the NT domain management functions that Hyena uses for NT domains, and we left it in as many customers were used to having it. The Servers object can be hidden using Object Manager->Nodes.

Hyena gets the domain controller listing from the directory using a function that Microsoft provided for just listing domain controllers. The All Computers listing also comes from an LDAP query for all class=computer objects, so it gets all computers of all types.

If you know of an API or indexed (!) LDAP query that can return just servers, please let us know.

Thanks

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

I've just installed Version 4.5 and all is now OK.

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

We are using MS Active Direcotry 2003 and Hyena v6.7. When i click on the DOMAIN CONTROLERS tab, i see only the 3 domain controllers on my network. However, when i click on SERVERS, I only see a fraction of the servers on my network. I seem to remember someone telling me that its related to the "Network Neighborhood" or some such - so I open up My Network Places, Entire Network, M$ Windows Network, <My Doimain> and I see ALL my servers, and workstations.

Am I missing a configuration option somewhere, either in Hyena, or on the server side that toggles this? Its pretty frustrating to not have the servers listed in the servers tab. Thanks!

[kstanush]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

As stated previously in this posting, the information for the Servers list comes from the Windows browse list, which works about 50% of the time. Since you have AD, your best option is to not use the Servers list, but see about putting your servers into their own OU and getting them that way. Or, you can create a custom object list and they will always be available. Trying to figure out why the browse list is missing some entries can be futile.

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Based on what you say, I would say thats a bug in your software. In my browse list, I have well over 50 servers listsed. In net view, 50 or more as well. In Hyena - 32. Refreshing does not change anything. Rebooting either. its always the SAME 32 servers.


Surley there is a better solution than telling your customers to " putting your servers into their own OU and getting them that way". That is just not a good solution. Sorry if that sounds rude, but your "solution" is not a solution, or for most people, a viable workaround.

[kstanush]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I can't change how the browse list works, and the underlying mechanism used by the Windows browse list is only vaguely documented and understood, even by Microsoft. That is why they have so many confusing utilities to troubleshoot the browse list and perhaps why Microsoft's own management utilities no longer use it. We only have the Servers list in Hyena so that in case the information on the list is accurate and useable, its available. If not, then there are several other ways to get to a 'Servers' list that Hyena provides.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has never supplied Windows with a mechanism, even in AD, to get a list of 'servers', probably because there isn't a way to define exactly what a server is. Since the days of NT 3.5, however, there has been a way to access the Windows browse list by specifying the type of computer needed, and it’s this mechanism that Hyena uses to classify computers when managing Windows NT domains. Since this mechanism also works regardless of the domain type, we carried over the 'Servers' object to AD domains.

Regardless of what you see with the Net View command, I have no way of knowing what Net View is doing, as Microsoft does not publish source code. I don't even know if Net View is using the published interface that Hyena is using to get the browse list. You can use Microsoft's utilities to get a list of the browser master and backup browsers, one of which probably has an inaccurate list, and it’s that computer that is returning an inaccurate or incomplete list to Hyena. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing which computer is returning this list to Hyena.

The reason I say that this is not a bug, is because I can't control the information returned to Hyena from Windows, nor can I control the limitations of the Windows operating system. Also, consider that this particular function has been in Hyena since v1.0, and that was released nearly a decade ago. Yes, Windows has changed a lot since then, but the underlying mechanism has not changed.

Visit this url to better understand the problem, if you care to:
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/lib...tserverenum.asp

The second to the last parameter to this function, domain, is what Hyena supplies to this function, in Netbios format. The first parameter is NULL, as its supposed to be according to the documentation. Hyena has no way of knowing where Windows returns the browse list from, which is part of the problem with the browse list. I'll get back to that problem later.

The sample code in this Microsoft documentation is exactly what Hyena does to get the server list, which in Hyena's case is getting the terminal server and server list, not including domain controllers. If you look closely at Microsoft's code, they violate their own documentation by allowing a server to be specified in the first parameter. I have no idea what the effect of this is, but this may force the function to execute on the designated computer. That does not help the situation anyway, since Hyena has no way of knowing what computer you want to execute the function on. Its assumed to execute locally.

The keepers of the browse list are de-centralized across Windows. Unless you use the browser troubleshooting utilities from the Windows Resource Kit, the only way in Hyena to see them is to add your domain into Hyena's GUI as a Windows domain, expand the domain, right click on Computers, select View Computers... and click off all of the browser roles. The resulting list will show all computers that are involved in the browser mechanism. Note that this function itself relies on the browse list to get this information, so it could still be inaccurate. It might be possible to use the Net View command or a Microsoft browser utility to get a list from each computer involved in the browser mechanism. That will probably reveal which computer has an incomplete list. The easiest way to ‘fix’ the problem is then to either stop and restart the browser server, or reboot the affected computer, which will force a browser election and your local computer will then pick up the list from another computer.

As you can see, this situation is out of our control, the mechanism is deeply flawed, we have no way of know exactly how some things work since Microsoft only provides the documentation that I pointed you to, and finally, we don’t know that the information provided to Hyena from Windows is not accurate. This is the reason that we no longer rely on the browse list for any significant functionality (and also why Microsoft doesn’t either). Hopefully this will clarify things. Let us know if you find what computer in your network has the incomplete list.

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Thanks for taking the time to give a detailed response.

[Guest]

Re: Servers Not showing Under server container

Hello,

I understand the problem, but I am still wondering if there is any way I could rectify the problem. Like the original post, I have an older Hyena in same VLAN that is working "normally", but my laptop with Hyena 6.7 lists only 1 server and that is a Linux machine with Samba. The laptop worked fine in an other VLAN, so it is almoust sure that it has something to do with browser issue.

A funny thing is that if I Import Domains from Object Manager I get:

DOMAIN (\\Linux)

That is quite strange. I used the tool to find out the Browsers and they all are quite OK (all are 2003 servers). This linux machine should have nothing to do with the domain or browsing.