SMS: Corrupted .ofr file Causes Offer Manager Not to Work (246614)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0
This article was previously published under Q246614

SYMPTOMS

Offer Manager is the component that is responsible for updating instruction files so that clients receive notification of new advertisements in the form of instruction files in the Sms\Inboxes\Offerinf.box folder. At secondary sites, a single corrupted .ofr file in the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder can cause Offer Manager to ignore one or more advertisements with no indication of an problem.

In such cases, Offer Manager indicates reception of an advertisement each time an update is received, but does not process some or all of the advertisements.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because Offer Manager builds a list of advertisements before it actually processes them. Advertisements are individually loaded and parsed; if a single advertisement (.ofr file) is not loaded successfully, Offer Manager does not attempt to load any further advertisements. During subsequent evaluation, advertisements that were not loaded are not processed.

WORKAROUND

There are two ways to avoid this issue:
  • Obtain an uncorrupted version of the .ofr file from the parent site's Sms\Inboxes\Offerinf.box folder and place it in the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box\Incoming folder. This overwrites the file in the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder and processing proceeds normally.
  • Remove the corrupted .ofr file from the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder. To identify the corrupted .ofr file, compare the .ofr files to those at the parent site in the Sms\Inboxes\Offerinf.box folder. After replacing the file, copy the .ofr file(s) for the unevaluated advertisement(s) from the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder to the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box\Incoming folder to trigger an advertisement evaluation cycle. Although this allows other advertisements to be processed, the "bad" advertisement must be re-created to be processed successfully.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Systems Management Server version 2.0.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:6/14/2005
Keywords:kbBug kbprb KB246614
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