SAS® Integration Technologies: Administrator's Guide (LDAP Version)

Troubleshooting a COM/DCOM Connection
The following tips provide assistance for troubleshooting a COM/DCOM connection.
• Make sure you observe COM/DCOM requirements:
♦ You must use a SAS server to test a DCOM connection. You cannot test a DCOM configuration by
trying to connect to a server on the same machine. This type of connection uses COM instead.
♦ To obtain details about why a DCOM connection attempt failed, check the System Log using the
Event Viewer on NT (Start Programs Administrative Tools Event Viewer). Double click on
an event that has a source of DCOM.
♦ In order to get two machines working with DCOM across untrusted domains, the AuthenticationLevel
must be set to NONE on both machines. However, if you do this, the impersonation of the client will
fail. There is also a requirement that the user names and passwords must be identical in both domains.
In this case, Authentication can be enabled.
♦ To determine if launch permissions or access permissions need to be fixed, use the control panel to
assign a sound to for starting and ending processes. If you hear the sound, launch permissions are
probably OK, but access permissions need to be adjusted. If you don't hear a sound, check your
launch permissions. This is necessary because the server process may come and go faster than the NT
task manager can update.
• Make sure the registry settings are correct:
♦ To reset application−specific dcomcnfg settings, edit the registry and remove the following keys:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\SAS.EXE (if it exists)
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\
{440196D4−90F0−11D0−9F41−00A024BB830C}
Run dcomcnfg and view the (empty) access and launch permissions. When you press OK or Apply,
the dcomcnfg utility will put in some values for access and launch permissions. You can see those
values by viewing the access and launch permissions again through dcomcnfg.
♦ The Default security registry location is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole
♦ DCOM registry settings affect local COM also. DefaultAccessPermissions (recommend Interactive
and System), DefaultLaunchPermissions (recommend Interactive and System), and Impersonation
(recommend IMPERSONATE) are all important for local COM. If you need to run local COM
without a license, set the authentication level to CONNECT.
♦ Restart any affected server or client processes.
♦ Individual registry keys can be secured with regedt32, but not regedit.
• Make sure the working directory is correct:
♦ The current working directory for all programs (including SAS) started from the NT4 SCM is:
c:\winnt\system32
(This is the directory where rpcss.exe exists.) This means that files created by the SAS server (without
a directory specified) will appear in this directory. To change the initial folder that is used after SAS
starts, use the −sasinitialfolder option in your config file.
Troubleshooting a COM/DCOM Connection 100