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Kb > Knowledgebase Article KB2018.0331

KB2018.0331
Problem: Domain Time Audit Server's expand binary sync log database files to text files function stops working. Error 223 may be logged.

This article applies to Domain Time Audit Server.

Last Updated: 31 March 2018

Problem and Symptoms

    You have selected Audit Server's "Expand binary sync log database files to text files" function, however, your large binary files are no longer being converted to text. You may also see this error in the Audit Log: "ERROR: Could not convert [filename].dt to text; error 223: The file size exceeds the limit allowed."

Cause

    As of version 5.2.b.20171113, Audit Server will not attempt to convert binary synchronization (.dt) files that contain more than 64k sync records to text. The binary file may continue to grow in size as additional data is added, however, text file conversion ceases.

Explanation

    Text conversion is very expensive in both disk and processing overhead, and grows exponentially as the source binary files get larger. Such conversion does not scale well in enviroments where large amounts of sync data is collected; conversions take excessive time to complete and use significant amounts of disk space.

    The convert-to-text function was designed to handle the number of records generated by NTP or DT2 synchronization where new sync records are added at a relatively relaxed rate (once per minute, for example). However, with the advent of PTP where a sync record can be added up to 128 time per second, this data extraction method is problematic. Therefore, limits have been placed on the amount of data that can be converted to text.

Solution

    As of version 5.2.b.20180303, the expand to text files function has been deprecated in favor of Daily Drift .csv file conversion, explained here. This is now the recommended method for extracting textual information from the binary sync logs. You should switch to this method as soon as possible.

    In the interim, if you need to continue using the expand to text function, you will need to move out any .dt binary files that contain more than 64k records in your Synchronization Logs folder to another location (as well as their corresponding .txt files). A new .dt file will be created during the next synchronization log collection and text conversion will resume.

    Note, recent versions of the DTDRIFT.EXE file have the ability to manipulate .dt binary record files somewhat, including the ability to chop larger files into sizes readable by the utility and that can be converted to .txt or .csv formats. See the documentation for Viewing/Managing Collected Logs for details.

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