Jobs won't start.

Question

N1 System Manager version 1.3.1 has stopped being able to start jobs, the reason given within the job status is "Job Startup Failure: Invocation failure. Please resubmit the job." but I can find no log entries elsewhere or any other diagnostics which can tell me what the problem might be.
The system used to work but stopped sometime between last November and now, so I'm guessing that a patch has broken the system somehow. The system is fully patched (according to PatchPro).
Showrev produces the following output (censored):
Hostname: head
Hostid: xxxxxxxx
Release: 5.10
Kernel architecture: i86pc
Application architecture: i386
Hardware provider:
Domain: xxxxx.xx.xx.xx
Kernel version: SunOS 5.10 Generic_125101-10
I've seen one report that having IPv6 configured on an interface can stop jobs running but none of the interfaces have this configured, here's the output from ifconfig -a:
lo0: flags=2001000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,VIRTUAL> mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
bge0: flags=1100843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,ROUTER,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
inet 192.168.1.250 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
ether 0:9:3d:0:dc:4c
bge1: flags=1100843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,ROUTER,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 3
inet xxx.x.xx.x netmask ffffff00 broadcast xxx.x.xx.255
ether 0:9:3d:0:dc:4d
bge1:1: flags=1100843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,ROUTER,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 3
inet 10.0.0.5 netmask ff000000 broadcast 10.255.255.255
The system is a v40z.
Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could go about diagnosing this problem further or even a possible pointer to a solution?

Answer 1

The "Job Startup Failure" typically indicates that there was some type of problem initiating the job in the underlying job management component (aka N1SPS). If N1SPS is not running or is misconfigured then this error could happen. One quit fix to try is to rerun n1smconfig (don't need to change any values) which can restart N1SPS. First shutdown N1SM then rerun n1smconfig.
If one of your patches was for N1SPS then that could have broken N1SM. N1SM depends upon a specific version of N1SPS which is bundled with N1SM.
You can also look in the syslog on the N1SM management server for any messages which might be relevant for your problem.