Seeing error: 'Failed packing command string into a buffer"

Products

• CA Privileged Access Manager - Server Control (PAMSC)

Issue/Introduction

Seeing error: 'Failed packing command string into a buffer. See Policy Model log file for more information.' when subscribing to sub policies/ parent policies of PMD

Following are the details and steps taken:

- Subscription to servers or sub_policies are failing for a few policies

 - Happening in mutltiple servers 

 - Does not show any error in the logs

 - Following is the error seen with command sepmd -n PolicyName Servername

Failed to subscribe NewServer.Domain to Policy Model PMD: Failed packing command string into a buffer. See Policy Model log file for more information.

 - Steps tried while troubleshooting:

1. Created new sub policy and tried subscribing it to the parent policy, which failed with the same error as mentioned above
2. Checked the following log files, which didn't provide any fails: pmd_audit, ERROR_LOG
3. Stopped and rebuilt parent policy.

Cause

Client had corrupted their local passwd file in the master PMD folder with invalid quote characters which caused a syntax error while trying to read the string in order to push policies to subscribers. while the character ‘ (start single quote) may look like a backtic  '  the mismatched character cannot be properly evaluated when trying to read the full string.

Resolution

 

In the /XX/XX/Policies/PMD/passwd file you need to either remove the invalid and unnecessary characters   ‘ '  or change to ' ' for proper unix quotes

 

UserName:x:5920334:33424:‘Some Description':/home/UserName:/bin/ksh

to

UserName:x:5920334:33424:Some Description:/home/UserName:/bin/ksh

 

Additional log details will be added to the sepmd -e command in future releases to help idemntify this issue easier.