No connectivity to BCM DB after moving office

[SusanG]

Here's a real special problem for you all -

My clients moved to a new office, forgetting to order DSL, then forgetting
to get a static IP address. Now they're making do with a wireless Broadband
card in the server to get Internet connectivity until March 16th, that dishes
out a new IP at 3 pm each day but the LAN is the same router we had before.
The IT wizards who installed the Broadband card effed up the BCM install in
an effort to fix it and I've got it back to down to just one error message.

Using this KB article
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/901164/en-us as a guide, I
worked for few hours on this today, but no luck.

The BCM 2003 works fine on the DB owner/local installed PC post-move. None
of the users who used to connect can do so. I've checked that everyone is
configured correctly for exceptions for File/Print Sharing and Microsoft
Small Business and port 56183. I changed the scope from subnet, what I had
before to any computer, for now, but that did no good either.

I can ping the DB host PC from client machines, by name and by IP address.
I've re-shared the BCM DB from the BCM on the DB Owner's PC, all the former
users are present and I can share to them using the Sharing Wizard. No errors
there.

But when I run this command, C:\>osql -E -S
computer_name\microsoftsmlbiz,56183, which is supposed to indicates that
there is network connectivity and that a database has been shared, I don't
get the error messages mentioned in the KB article for Troubleshooting a
Shared Database in BCM, I get this one:

cannot generate SSPI context

Looking that up got me this KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811889
which lead me to this information:

The "Cannot generate SSPI context" error is generated when SSPI uses
Kerberos to delegate over TCP/IP and Kerberos cannot complete the necessary
operations to successfully delegate the user security token to the
destination computer that is running SQL Server.

AND When the SQL Server driver on the client resolves the fully qualified
DNS of the computer that is running SQL Server, the corresponding DNS is used
to form the SPN for this computer. Therefore, any issues pertaining to how
the IP address or host name is resolved to the fully qualified DNS by WinSock
may cause the SQL Server driver to create an invalid SPN for the computer
that is running SQL Server.

There's more: The key factor that makes Kerberos authentication successful
is the valid DNS functionality on the network. You can verify this
functionality on the client and the server by using the Ping command-line
utility.

To see if the Ping command-line utility resolves the fully qualified DNS of
SQLServer1, run the following command:
ping -a IPAddress

Which I DID, and I was successful, until 3 pm anyway. I had to leave at 2:30
pm. I know BCM 2003 is MSDE, but does it work the same way over TCP/IP?

Help! If the very worst occurs, will I have to reinstall all the clients
from scratch?

 

[SusanG]

So this was way too hard for any of you to reply to..OK I will have to wait
until they get their static IP and resolve myself. Jeesh, what a girl has to
do these days...the static IP is supposed to be delivered on 3/16, and I will
let you all know the result. What a mess! And all because they did NOT read
my 18 Pt. note about ORDER STATIC IP, can you believe it?

 

[Luther]

So this was way too hard for any of you to reply to..OK I will have to wait
until they get their static IP and resolve myself. Jeesh, what a girl has to
do these days...the static IP is supposed to be delivered on 3/16, and I will
let you all know the result. What a mess! And all because they did NOT read
my 18 Pt. note about ORDER STATIC IP, can you believe it?


















- Show quoted text -

You'd think that if both client and server reboot after 3pm, then the
ip address change should not matter. And it clearly doesn't to ping,
so I suspect something else is going on. If communication are using
Kerberos, then you are on a domain (not workgroup) LAN? Was the domain
controller rebooted after 3pm?

Sql/bcm will use hostnames. Does pinging with hostnames also work, or
only ip addresses?

I have run into differences between sql 2000 (MSDE) and 2005 (Express)
networking. The short story is that networking is more secure in 2005,
as they are now encrypting the data on the wire, and in the aether
with wifi. The popularity of wifi is probably what drove that change.

I don't think reinstalling client will make a difference. If one
client was hosed, maybe. But if they all have the same symptom, then
its likely to be a network issue.

Did the hostnames change in the move?

 

[SusanG]

Thanks, Luther, that's what so weird - I can ping successfully with hostnames
and with the IP address, both, just can't connect to the DB ever. But next
Tuesday I'm booked to go fix it, so I will report back on what happens next.

 

[SusanG]

I prayed to the BCM goddess last night and a BCM miracle occurred. Went into
the site this morning, day after they got their static IP, opened Outlook,
saw the BCM tool bar again, it had connected by itself to the existing DB,
all contacts/accounts present, all good, left the site. Lesson - BCM doesn't
work with a dynamic IP, ever.