File Replication Journal Wrap and Sysvol errors with Small Business Server migration
When doing a migration from Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 to SBS 2008, SBS 2011 or Windows server standard version, one of the first things you should do is run the SBS 2003 Best Practices Analyzer and of course check your event log for known problems.
One of the issues I see often is the sysvol, journal wrap Event ID 13568, Source NtFrs in the File Replication Eventlog.
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The File Replication Service has detected that the replica set “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)” is in JRNL_WRAP_ERROR.
Replica set name is : “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)”
Replica root path is : “c:\windows\sysvol\domain”
Replica root volume is : “\\.\C:”
A Replica set hits JRNL_WRAP_ERROR when the record that it is trying to read from the NTFS USN journal is not found. This can occur because of one of the following reasons.
[1] Volume “\\.\C:” has been formatted.
[2] The NTFS USN journal on volume “\\.\C:” has been deleted.
[3] The NTFS USN journal on volume “\\.\C:” has been truncated. Chkdsk can truncate the journal if it finds corrupt entries at the end of the journal.
[4] File Replication Service was not running on this computer for a long time.
[5] File Replication Service could not keep up with the rate of Disk IO activity on “\\.\C:”.
Setting the “Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore” registry parameter to 1 will cause the following recovery steps to be taken to automatically recover from this error state.
[1] At the first poll, which will occur in 5 minutes, this computer will be deleted from the replica set. If you do not want to wait 5 minutes, then run “net stop ntfrs” followed by “net start ntfrs” to restart the File Replication Service.
[2] At the poll following the deletion this computer will be re-added to the replica set. The re-addition will trigger a full tree sync for the replica set.
WARNING: During the recovery process data in the replica tree may be unavailable. You should reset the registry parameter described above to 0 to prevent automatic recovery from making the data unexpectedly unavailable if this error condition occurs again.
To change this registry parameter, run regedit.
Click on Start, Run and type regedit.
Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Click down the key path:
“System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters”
Double click on the value name
“Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore”
and update the value.
If the value name is not present you may add it with the New->DWORD Value function under the Edit Menu item. Type the value name exactly as shown above.———————————————————————————————————————————–
Fixing this issue is in most cases relative simple just add the “Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore” registry key noted in the event log and change the value to “1” and restart the “File Replication Service” service.
Before changing the registry key I would recommend to make a backup from the C:\Windows\Sysvol folder.
But after doing that there appeared a new warning message in the File Replication Eventlog, Event ID 13566, Source Ntfrs.
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File Replication Service is scanning the data in the system volume. computer <domain name> cannot become a domain controller until this process is complete. The system volume will then be shared as SYSVOL.
To check for the SYSVOL share, at the command prompt, type:
net share
When File Replication Service completes the scanning process, the SYSVOL share will appear.
The initialization of the system volume can take some time. The time is dependent on the amount of data in the system volume.———————————————————————————————————————————–
As stated you have to wait a while, but I could wait as long as I want but the sysvol share doesn’t appear.
Solution: At the end the solution seems to be that the ntfrs jet database was corrupted. To solve the problem:
Stop the “File Replication Service” service
Rename the “C:\windows\ntfrs\jet” folder
Start the “File Replication Service” service
One other thing that could happen is the folders under Windows\Sysvol are moved to a subfolder called “NtFrs_PreExisting_See_EventLog”. If you have more than one domain controller this is no problem and the folders will be replicated from another domain controller, but if you only have one domain controller which is mostly the case when using SBS. You can copy the right folders back from the backup you made before, or just move them out of the “NtFrs_PreExisting_See_EventLog” folder to one level up.
Solve these problems before you are starting your migration otherwise you will run into replication errors.
