Client Manager - driving me crazy

I also experienced this unfortunate event today (or at least I noticed it today)… Client Manager worked great for months, now I have no records.

I had Client Manager configured for a Network Attached Storage… spent quite a bit of time getting it working properly… didn’t think I’d need to fiddle with it again.

Questions before I spend hours lobotomizing the thing…

1 - is there an easy fix ?
2 - Do I need to start from scratch and reconfigure the entire CMM or can this be saved?
3 - Should I expect this to happen again assuming I can get it fixed?

This is the start of what I see in the log file.

SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My ProFile Data\2013T1’ isn’t available
SourceTrace Error: 0 : Unable to start the File Monitor Manager

Error : System.NullReferenceException Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source : Trilogy.Services.Management
Details : at Trilogy.Services.Management.FileMonitorManager.StartClientMonitor(ServerConfiguration configuration)
at Trilogy.Services.Management.ServicesManager.StartFileMonitor(ServerConfiguration configuration)

SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My ProFile Data\2013T1’ isn’t available
SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My ProFile Data\2012T1’ isn’t available
SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My ProFile Data\2014T1’ isn’t available
SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My ProFile Data\2011T1’ isn’t available
SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My Taxcycle Data\2015 T1’ isn’t available
SourceTrace Error: 0 : The path ‘\Diskstation\WD320GB\data\My Taxcycle Data\Documents’ isn’t available

Did you try to re-index per the release notes? Or are these the errors in respect to the re-index?

https://www.taxcycle.com/Blog/Post/9384/TaxCycle-version-6-0-31153-0-Paper-filing-certification-of-T1-and-TP1-returns-improved-donations-workflow-customization-database-changes

@snoplowguy

As @james1 notes, we’ve expanded the database to include some more AFR and NOA flags, so a re-index is required.

Andrew is the expert, but based on what I know, it sounds like there may be a permissions issue… CM runs as a system user, and if that user does not have permission to access your NAS, then you’ll get errors like what you’re seeing.

~ Cameron

After reading @snoplowguy message again, this sounds like it could be the issue; however, if the permissions were working before, why would they stop with the update? I am sure @Andrew could figure it out in the end.

@snoplowguy

Can you check what user the Service is running as under the windows app, services.msc ?

With this we will be able to check whether it is running as a network user (like it should be) or if it is running as a Local System account.

Please let us know the results.

-Aliysa

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Thanks for all of the quick responses!

@Aliysa, it looks to me like it has somehow reverted to a Local System Account?

Would it be as easy as putting the network credentials back in there again?

Yes it would, after you enter in the credentials you should be able to index, and start using the CM.

-Aliysa

Thank you, I will fiddle around with that.

I still can’t understand how all that information would have disappeared and the Service revert back to the Local System Account by itself.

The service reverting back to the default account is a bit perplexing. What should happen is an auto-update or full setup should detect that CM is running, pause it, update the software and then start it again – retaining the services user account details.

I’ve spent some time looking at this trying to figure out what could be going wrong on the re-start.

After you updated, did you have to start CM yourself again? Or was it running, but not returning any results.

Thanks!

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So far no joy… in services.msc I enter the User Account, the password, stop the service, start the service.
In Windows the service seems to start up ok.

I re-index the files… it seems to take a minute or so, which tells me it must be doing something.
I open the Client Manager… no files.

I try going into the Options–>Client Manager–>Server Options. Stop the service, Start the service, go back to the Client Manager, nothing is there.

I go back to services.msc and check that again, logon has reverted back to “Local System Account”… meaning it deleted the account info I put in as suggested by @aliysa.

Thanks for everyone’s help. I might try to delete everything and start again from scratch.

@Andrew… I imagine the Client Manager Service was running when I updated the software yesterday. I don’t use it every day so I can’t say for sure if it was running or not. I know the other day I used it for something and it was working.

After a complete overhaul, the Client Manager is now running again… I thought I was going to have to leave here tonight in defeat.

I don’t know for sure why I lost complete access to the Client Manager, however, it could be a series of unfortunate events, starting with an expired Windows password. I installed the Client Manager on November 12, 2016. In order to install the Client Manager on my NAS, I needed to set up a new user in Windows (call him TaxcycleCMM) with its own password and permissions. Things worked fine for some 3 months… but it seems the windows login password for the user known as TaxcycleCMM was automatically set to expire every 90 days. I did not set this, it may be a Windows default. This expiry must have happened sometime on Sunday, prior to installing the new Taxcycle.

So, to @Andrew’s question… it would seem very likely the Client Manager was not running when I installed the latest version of Taxcycle Monday … which possibly caused the CMM module not to hook in properly, as things did not to work once I updated the Windows login password for the TaxcycleCMM user. When I updated the password I removed the expiry and re-used the same password, assuming I would just be able to open up the Client Manager Module (CMM) as normal.

At this stage, I called out for help in the community forum, as I thought everything should have worked once I fixed the expired Windows password, but it didn’t. This is when @aliysa pointed me to the Taxcycle Shared Services, which had dropped the network login and reverted to SYSTEM… either due to the Taxcycle update, or because it was locked out of its user account.

For some other reason beyond the scope of this discussion, I had to re-enter the login details for the NAS Diskstation as well… as once I thought I was up and running it still didn’t work. The clue here was the the log file errors turned from “directory not available” errors to “insufficient permissions to read the directory”. Once I re-entered the username and password for the Diskstation (Network Attached Storage) via the windows user “TaxcycleCMM” the Taxcycle index file rebuilt
itself and I was off the the races… so to speak.

The long and short of it is this issue started out as a simple problem on my end (an expired Windows User password).

I do not log into Windows using the TaxcycleCMM User so I was unaware the Windows password set for that user had expired on Sunday, nor did I know that Windows automatically snuck in a 90 day expiry date for the password when I first set up that user in order to use the Client Manager. When I could not find any of my data in the Client Manager yesterday, I had no indication it was due to an expired password, so it took me a while to determine the underlying reason. It wasn’t until I tried to log into the Windows CMM User directly during troubleshooting that I realized the password no longer worked.

I apologize for any time that anyone spent trying to help solve this for me. Like I said, this issue likely started out with an expired Windows user password that I was unaware of, which probably caused the Client Manager not to be active when I installed the latest version of Taxcycle, which likely caused other connectivity issues once I did find and reset the Windows password.

Hopefully this doesn’t happen again… :neutral_face:

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Talk to us in… oh, 92 days.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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that will be in May… :slight_smile:

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