System Profile
System Full Name | CAWIS Mail Distribution Module |
System Full Name (French) | SWIMN Module de distribution du courrier |
Business Administrator |
Lauren McMahon | |
Business Owner | Jenny Young |
Director | Philippe Ngassam |
Subject Matter Expert |
Team Avro Arrows | |
Division | National Aircraft Certification |
NTARS Code | CA60(?) |
Source Location | |
Source Code Location | |
Migration to DevOps | |
New Source Code Location (DevOps) | https://dev.azure.com/transport-canada/DSD-CIVAV Support/_git/CAWIS-MDM |
Technology Assessment
Platform Type | Console |
|---|---|
Database Platform and Version | Oracle 18c |
Development Language and Framework | VB.NET |
Operating System and Version | Windows Server 2016 |
Additional Dependencies | TC Mailer, RightFax, EPPlus (Nuget) |
Authentication | None |
Environment Access Information
*WWWFILES and URL are not applicable for CAWIS-MDM
DEV
ENV | UNC |
|---|
WWWFILES
URL
DB
| Log files Current logs are in a file called | DB |
|---|---|---|
DEV | \\tcwebscriptstest\Scripts\CivAv\CAWIS-MDM (Dev) | CAWISD |
PREACC |
n/a | PREACC_CA | |
ACC | \\tcwebscriptstest\Scripts\CivAv\CAWIS-MDM | CAWISA |
PROD | \\tcwebscripts\scripts\CivAv\CAWIS-MDM | CAWISP |
TRAINING |
System Overview
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Good To Know
CAWIS MDM is a mission critical application. It is used to send aviation safety information on a national and international basis |
|---|
A single emailing can contain up to 20,000+ emails.
. Problems distributing the emails can generate an aviation safety incident. |
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CAWIS stands for Continuing Airworthiness Web Information System
MDM stands for “Mail Distribution Module”.
The Mail Distribution Module (MDM) is used to distribute PDF versions of Airworthiness Directives (AD), Civil Aviation Safety Alerts (CASA) or Aviation Safety Letters (LETTER) of interest to 5008 Owners and Canadian and Foreign Special Interest Group (SIGs).
5008 Owners can potentially receive the information by email, fax or by Canada Post. SIGs only receive the information by email. If the email to a SIG fails Transport Canada makes no further attempt to send the information to that SIG, and neither does the MDM feature.
Mailbox management
MDM does the following steps to manage Mailbox size as the Mailbox cannot exceed its 2 gig size limit otherwise replies (bounce-back messages) will be lost:
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See also. for detailed MDM repair information and history: MDM OUTAGES - BSD - Civil Aviation - Confluence (atlassian.net)
e-mail notifications regarding expiration of the AAIR inbox password
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Request SSC to fix the SSC password issue.
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Indicate that the AAIR inbox, which uses CAWIS MDM, is a mission critical aviation safety application.
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Include the error message from the relevant AAIR inbox email
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Resetting the AAIR inbox is an interactive process.
An agent/LAN Admin will initiate process. In January 2023, this was completed via a Teams screen sharing session in which the agent initiated the process but provided control of the screen to the maintenance team member who performed the password change.
Once the password changes need to be done in the CAWIS database. They should be done immediately after the database change. The steps are provide in the next section, “Updating TOAD”.
After the database change is complete check the CAWIS-MDM log (step 1).
Check that the email account is not locked: Open a command prompt and type “net user DNRENAC /domain“. In the response, you should get something like below:
If the line “Account active” says “Locked” or “No”, contact the Service Desk for them to reactivate the account.
Updating the database
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UPDATE TR47_CAWIS_GENERAL_PROPS A SET A.PROPERTY_VALUE =
(SELECT PROPERTY_VALUE FROM TR47_CAWIS_GENERAL_PROPS B
WHERE B.PROPERTY_NAME = 'MDM - MAILBOX PASSWORD' )
WHERE PROPERTY_NAME = 'MDM BACKUP - LAST KNOWN PASSWORD';
UPDATE TR47_CAWIS_GENERAL_PROPS SET PROPERTY_VALUE =
(SELECT PROPERTY_VALUE FROM TR47_CAWIS_GENERAL_PROPS B
WHERE B.PROPERTY_NAME = 'MDM - MAILBOX PASSWORD SECRET' )
WHERE PROPERTY_NAME = 'MDM BACKUP - LAST SECRET ENCRYPTION';
then, null out the encryption key
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Clearing the value of “MDM - MAILBOX PASSWORD SECRET” is to tell MDM that the password is unencrypted. (Do not remove the row).
a. Set the value of “MDM - MAILBOX PASSWORD” to the new, unencrypted password.
b. Set the value of “MDM - MAILBOX PASSWORD LAST CHECK DATE to SYSDATE + 2”. This will ensure that MDM does the password change two days after the reset (you have to wait a day to do another password change)
Any backlog of distribution jobs may take 15-20 minutes to begin executing afterward
The MDM inbox password will auto-update normally by way of the MDM process a day or so afterward. A new encrypted password and encryption key will then appear on the General properties table.
TC IM/IT can also allocate a new mailbox password if its believed that the password has been altered outside the MDM process,General Troubleshooting
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The following section, “General troubleshooting” provides an overview of the steps to take when investigating an issue with the CAWIS MDM Application. Links with more in-depth details about how issues have been resolved to-date, are also provided.
General troubleshooting
Contact list for the contacts mentioned below
Current update, Jan 2023 regarding who to contact:
Check the log file for the environment that is affected. The current The current log file is called “output.log”. They are located in the UNC locations listed in the Environment access information at the beginning of this document. The log files are automatically rotated when they hit a certain size. You may need to look in the “logs” folder if the problem happened a while ago.
The MDM inbox/account is called DNRENAC. Currently, it’s password is auto updated every 80 days, by the MDM process on the script server at \\ncrws548\scripts\CivAv\CAWIS-MDM\.
Note: The log files are automatically rotated when they hit a certain size. You may need to look in the “logs” folder if the problem happened a while ago.. Again, log files in the “Log” directory will tell you exactly when the process began failingIf there’s no logs being generated => the task isn’t running :
Contact the group responsible for the server for diagnostic or server restart.
Current update, Jan 2023 regarding who to contact:For support on the web application contact the web group for diagnostic or server restart.
For a production issue with the web application, open an ORION ticket to the attention of the web server group so that they can work on and document the issue.
If the process seems to be looping the same messages => One of the thread in stuck:
You can wait for the deadlock-prevention timer (2hr) to kick in.
OR contact the group responsible for the server to kill the task.
Per Marcin on Jan 27, 2023: “the deadlock issues we had we back in 2020 and for those you need to contact Oracle dba group.”
If
there’sthere's a message like “Application is disabled due to database configuration.“ => The application is disabled
In the TR47 table in the CAWIS database, set the configuration called “MDM - APPLICATION ENABLE” to “true”.
If there’s a message like “exchange server is unreachable.“ => The email account might be locked.
Open a command prompt and type
“net“net user DNRENAC /
domain“domain“. In the response, you should get something like below:
If the line “Account active” says “Locked” or “No”, contact the Service Desk for them to reactivate the account. To-date, most recently in Jan 2023, Robert Lang and Muhammad
DuhabeiDehaibi assisted with this.
The
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password for DNRENAC is in PINS. It is set to “never expire”. If the password does get changed for any reason the database table TR47_CAWIS_GENERAL_PROPS also needs to be updated. See also:
Resetting/Updating AAIR inbox password - BSD - Civil Aviation - Confluence (atlassian.net)