SMS: Explanation of Error 38a in the Despooler Log File (264945)

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The Error 38a error message does not represent a problem condition, it is actually an informational message to inform the administrator that a Request ID was not found in an instruction.

This error message typically occurs when you cancel, delete, or expire a job. The error message means that you have reached the end of the file without finding a particular Request ID.

For example, you have 9,000 clients in a single domain, 300 of which were sent a Microsoft Office package.

When you cancel the Office job, a single cancel instruction is created for the domain. Despooler then builds a list of .ins files from the PCMDOM.BOX\Domain sub-folder. It then reads each .ins file, and determines if the Request ID you are canceling exists in the INS. If it does, it is removed. If not, an error message with a 906 (hexadecimal 38a) is generated, potentially causing an 8700 error message. However, because Despooler was tasked by the single cancel instruction, only the first 38a error message is logged.

The process must read through each instruction to determine if you can perform a cancel, expire or delete request; this means that the process can be very slow for large domains. The only time a perceived problem is apparent, is if a Request ID in an instruction is not found. At that point (starting when the error condition is written to the log), this process can take a long time to complete.

If no error condition exists, the slowdown would still be a factor, but would not be apparent, as there wouldn't be an error message in the log.