Twelve year-old Leroy “Encyclopaedia” Braun sat in the driveway of his home early on a summer day. He earned his nickname because he was very smart — smart enough to have opened a detective agency, which was frequented by other neighborhood children when things were amiss. He was cleaning his dirty bicycle when he was approached by Christopher, one of the younger boys from just up the street.

“I’m missing about 45 lines of XML from all but one of the K2HostServer.config files on my K2 Servers,” the visitor began.

Encyclopaedia put down his rag and looked up at the worried boy. “Tell me more about these servers,” he encouraged.

Christopher resumed with a sigh. “The missing XML handles claims auth configuration. The original server is the only one that still has the node. The other servers that don’t have it were all added last year. Everything seems to be working fine, but I don’t understand how the farm is operating with the claims auth node present in only one server, and how it came to be missing in all of the others.”

Encyclopaedia asked, “What version of K2 are you running?”

“4.6.8,” Christopher replied. He reached into his pocket and offered Encyclopaedia a shiny new quarter. “Will you take the case?”

The proprietor of the Encyclopaedia Braun Detective Agency picked his rag up from the concrete. “Save your money,” he said. “Your claims code isn’t missing. It’s right where it should be.”

HOW DID ENCYCLOPAEDIA KNOW THIS?

Encyclopaedia Braun knew Christopher’s claims auth code wasn’t missing, because K2 moved claims auth configuration information inside the database and removed it from K2HostServer.config starting with K2 blackpearl 4.6.8.

Christopher said the servers missing the code were all built in the previous year — likely, when 4.6.8 was current. The remaining, original server was likely built out before 4.6.8 was released, and was upgraded to that version.

The upgrade would not have removed the XML from the configuration file, but it would have made it obsolete. Christopher is free to remove the code from the config file on the original server.

If you’re upgrading to 4.6.8 or later, leave the claims authentication XML in K2HostServer.config until AFTER the upgrade is completed. The installer will need the values from the config to insert into the database during the upgrade.
 

If you never read any of Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown mysteries as a kid, you missed out. Look into them for your kids. I loved them.