Managing the NDS tree

Directory services repair overview

The scoadmin(1M) Directory Services Repair utility allows you to maintain and repair the local NetWare Directory database of a tree. This utility performs the following operations:

Repairs the local database
You are provided with tools to repair replicas, replica rings, and Server objects; you can also view the purge time of each replica to ensure that data in each replica is the same.
Analyzes each server in each local partition for synchronization errors.
You can view errors and list the partition name, server name, synchronization time, and error code for each error.
Writes replica information to a log file.
The log file contains detailed information about local partitions and servers; this information helps you diagnose damage to the database.
Creates a dump file of a damaged database.
The dump file is saved in a compressed format; you can use Directory Services Repair to diagnose and repair the damaged database.
Checks the remote server ID list.
You can access a list of the identification numbers for remote servers; you can use this list to verify the identification numbers of remote servers and modify the numbers if you need to.
Searches for local database objects.
A browser allows you to locate and synchronize objects in the local database.

Some NDS database problems are not fatal and NDS continues to operate. But if the database becomes corrupted, you get a message on the console that the server could not open the local database. In this case, run Directory Services Repair or re-install the NDS database to fix the problem so that the database can be opened.

NOTE: The Directory Services Repair utility affects only the parts of the database that are stored on the server where you run it. To fix the entire database, you must run the utility on each server that contains a part of the database.

The Directory Services Repair utility changes inconsistent objects to Unknown objects when they do not have mandatory properties or are invalid in other respects (for example, their properties do not meet minimum requirements for an object type). Unknown objects can be deleted but cannot be changed back to their original object type.

In NetWare 4.1, Unknown objects are represented by question mark icons in NetWare Administrator.