The information in these Release Notes applies to Novell File Reporter 2.6 and contains the following sections:
The following new features have been added to Novell File Reporter 2.6:
Client utility for managing custom report SQL queries and custom report layouts.
Updated the interface for managing Scan Data. All scan data is now visible, along with a status. In addition, scan data entries can now be marked for deletion.
Scan policies have been updated to allow for rolling retention of the previous scan for File System and Permissions scan types.
One scan per target and scan type may be flagged as a baseline scan for indefinite retention. This is in addition to any Previous scan retention defined by a scan policy.
Built-in comparison reports were added to take advantage of the new Previous and Baseline scan retentions:
Historic File System Comparison
Historic NCP Permissions Comparison
Historic NTFS Permissions Comparison
The ability to copy Report Definitions has been added to both the Web Application and the Report Designer. The Web Application is able to copy any report definition type, and the Report Designer is able to copy any Custom Query report definitions.
The following updates are included in Novell File Reporter 2.6:
The Windows components now require .NET Framework 4.5.2. This version of the .NET Framework will be upgraded if not already present for Windows installations of the NFR Engine, NFR Agent and Client Tools.
Several Chart Wizard fixes in Report Designer, with the update of third-party components
Several improvements for PostgreSQL’s SQL dialect with the syntax parser and query builder in the Report Designer’s Query Editor.
Upgrades of an existing installation with SQL Server will set the recovery model to SIMPLE instead of FULL or BULK.
This is a change from 2.0.2, which incorrectly shipped without any recovery model set, thus defaulting to FULL.
With 2.5.0, any new installations would correctly set the recovery model to SIMPLE, but upgrades would fail to update any existing installations if set otherwise.
This version now properly coerces the setting back to SIMPLE when performing the database update.
For Stored Reports, there are cases where the final report might have incorrectly been limited to only 10,000 records.
For eDirectory, the associated Internet EMail Address attribute is multi-valued. In cases where a user has more than one email address, the first address will be used for any subscribed notifications, whereas before, an error would be returned.
In cases where large numbers (> 2000) of notifications are marked for aggregation, the SQL query to update the notification statuses could fail due to an excessive number of query parameters in a single query.
For some reports, the report functions for PostgreSQL were incorrectly set to use a 32-bit integer instead of a 64-bit integer for the unique keys. This caused an out-of-range error for installations that had processed in excess of 2^31 (or approximately 2 billion) scan data entries over the lifetime of the installation.
For larger reports, it is possible that report generation exceeds the default execution response timeout for web pages. Previously, this could be temporarily addressed by modifying timeout parameters in the web.config file. Now, the admin-defined parameter Report Page Execution Timeout is available in the Web Interface Configuration which provides a separate timeout for the Report Preview and Stored Report Viewer pages.
The filter expression control in the Report Definition Editor for built-in File Data reports (File Extension, Owner, Date-Age, and Duplicate File) now provides filters for File Extension.
With the release of version 2.6, the deletion of a Scan Policy no longer requires the deletion of the associated Scan Data.
Novell File Reporter 2.6 includes the breaking changes from previous versions of the product.
Starting with version 2.6, only agents for OES 11 servers will be supported.
With Open Enterprise Server 2 moving to self-support as of January 1, 2015, there is no longer any active support for NFR Agents running on this platform. See https://support.novell.com/lifecycle/ for detailed Novell product lifecycle information.
Although basic support for legacy 2.0.2 NFR Agents is still available with this release, support for OES 2 volumes will be limited to proxy-based scanning only.
Starting with version 2.6, NFR Agents are no longer being developed for 32-bit platforms.
With extended support ending for Novell Open Enterprise Server 2, all currently supported OES platforms are 64-bit only.
For Microsoft environments needing local agents on legacy 32-bit servers (Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008), the version 2.0.2 NFR Agent for 32-bit is included. Although this agent will no longer include any new developments, it will be minimally supported for this release.
Prior to version 2.6, Duplicate File Detail reports required at least one of the following parameters: create time, modify time, or name. However, results would potentially include all files of the specified criteria, but for different file sizes. This included drill-down report access for the Duplicate File report when clicking on a specific duplicate entry.
With the 2.6 update, the Size parameter is now always required. Any existing Duplicate File Detail reports will need to be updated to reflect the intended size.
The following are known issues with Novell File Reporter 2.6:
Single-label DNS domains are not supported in Active Directory environments.
Windows DFS Standalone mode is currently unsupported.
Permissions scans currently do not include LSA (Local Security Authority) privileges.
Permissions scans for Active Directory environments do not currently enumerate group memberships for local groups.
Permissions scans for eDirectory environments do not currently include Inherited Rights Filters (IRFs).
File System scans in eDirectory environments cannot collect the Compressed File Size on NSS volumes.
The Engine might stop processing scans if more than about 500 concurrent scans have been delegated. Scans that appear to have stopped processing will need to be cancelled. As a workaround, plan scan scheduling so that only a few hundred concurrent scans are delegated at any one time.
Retained Previous and Baseline scans do not yet include point-in-time data for directory services data. This means that differential Permissions reports that need to include changes for indirect rights via group memberships in Active Directory and security equivalences in eDirectory are currently unavailable. Furthermore, detection of changes to directory service accounts, such as a user or group rename, are not yet available.
Drill-down links to Detail reports from Summary or aggregate file system reports only work in the context of the Web Application. They do not work with exported reports such as PDF.
Historic File System Comparison reports for Novell file systems might include more entries than expected when choosing to include modified entries with changes to Create Time, Modify Time or Access Time. Due to an issue with the Novell Client APIs reporting timestamps incorrectly for different Daylight Saving Time periods, the collected scan data might indicate a significant number of changes based on timestamps which appear to be off by an +1 or -1 hour. For more details, see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=928583.
The Engine service might fail to restart if the database is unavailable after restart. If this happens, you must start the Engine service manually.
During a Directory Quota operation in Active Directory environments, an attempt to stop the NFR Agent might appear to be unresponsive.
The following list describes current bugs and workarounds:
Scans in this condition might display with a next retry time in the past. Simply cancel the scan and run the scan policy again to work around this issue.
NOTE:To add the Table of Contents to the Report Footer, first add the TOC to the report (which requires first placing it in a Report Header), then move it to the Report Footer.
When using SQL window functions, some database-specific window parameters might not be recognized.
An unhandled exception might appear in the Query Editor in certain cases when the SQL parser throws an exception.
The Query Editor might not close properly if the SQL parser fails to validate.
Occasionally when running a preview report from the web interface, the displayed report may partially render and then become blank. Simply refresh the preview page, or close and reopen the preview report.
In some circumstances, an NFR Agent service might become unresponsive after a number of failed attempts to heartbeat into the engine. In this case, the NFR Agent service might not shut down or restart without needing to kill the agent process.