Introduction
This document describes the reason why a failure can occur while emailing scheduled reports on a Security Managment Appliance (SMA).
What is the reason of the alert that a failure occurred while emailing periodic report?
Alert is sent from the SMA
The Critical message is:
A failure occurred while emailing periodic report 'Executive Summary'.
This subscription has been removed from the scheduler.
GUI log file at exactly 2:00 am
gui.current:Mon Oct 3 02:00:03 2016 Critical: A failure occurred while emailing periodic report 'Executive Summary'.
gui.current:Mon Oct 3 02:00:03 2016 Critical: PERIODIC REPORTS: Could not e-mail report. Subscription settings: {'report_title': 'Executive Summary', 'recipients': ['user@example.com'], 'schedule': {'hour': [2], 'month': [], 'callback': <bound method System.execute_subscription_by_id of <reporting.periodic_reports.system.System instance at 0x94038680>>, 'second': [0], 'arguments': ('20160120095635_Executive Summary_calendar_day',), 'year': [], 'wday': [], 'day': [], 'minute': [0]}, 'user_name': 'user', 'options': {'lang': 'en-us', 'scheduled': 1, 'format': 'pdf', 'days_include': 'calendar_day', 'host_name': None, 'host_id': '0'}, 'report_type': 'phoebe', 'report_def_id': 'mga_overview_scheduled', 'creation_timestamp': 1453301795L, 'archive': 1} Traceback: ('egg/command_client.py send_message|558', "<class 'Commandment.DaemonUnresponsiveError'>", 'dc-ironmgt-001.cvent.net: The daemon is not responding.', '[periodic_reports/report_task.py run|188] [periodic_reports/report_task.py _send_message|612] [periodic_reports/report_task.py _send_SMTP|592] [egg/command_client.py call|237] [egg/command_client.py send_message|558]')
Solution
The reason why the scheduled report is failing almost every day by 2:00 am is due to collision of processes which are running during daily backups that in this example is configured to 1:30 am. During this backup process certain processes will be stopped and restarted in order to push data to the remote SMA. If the SMA generates reports or tracking data while the backup is in progress it could cause that sometimes the report generation at 2 am as in this example is not working as expected. Depending on the amount of data the SMA has to transfer, the backup can take more or less time. If the backup finishes before 2 am then the scheduled report generation works. If the SMA is still busy with the backup and restarts the process at the time the report gets generated, then it can cause a failure.The solution is to configure the scheduled reports before the daily backups run.
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