Group Policy not replicating
Ran into the following issue where the SYSVOL contents were not replicating to one or more servers. Group policies are stored in the SYSVOL folder therefore group policy was not replicating. Active Directory synchronization is working however to those same servers. SYSVOL uses the File Replication Service (FRS) to distribute and sync SYSVOL around to all the domain controllers. We noticed that clients at a couple of locations began receiving errors with group policy updates. Taking a further look on the domain controllers at the locations where the clients were having trouble with GPO update, there was an error in the event log:
Log Name: File Replication Service
Source: NtFrs
Date: 11/21/2013 9:58:58 PM
Event ID: 13568
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: server.domain.com
Description:
The File Replication Service has detected that the replica set “DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)” is in JRNL_WRAP_ERROR.
Resolution
> Click on Start, Run and type regedit.
> Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
> Navigate to: “System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters”
> Double click on the value name “Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore”
and update the “Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore” registry parameter to 1.
This will cause the following recovery steps to be taken to automatically recover from this error state.
1. At the first poll, which will occur in 5 minutes, this computer will be deleted from the replica set. If you do not want to wait 5 minutes, then run “net stop ntfrs” followed by “net start ntfrs” to restart the File Replication Service.
2. At the poll following the deletion this computer will be re-added to the replica set. The re-addition will trigger a full tree sync for the replica set. Let the replication process complete. This could take up to an hour or more. Once your have verified that SYSVOL replication is completed normally, try running GPUPDATE from the client that had errors. It should work.
The final step is to set the Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore back to 0. Otherwise, anytime the FRS service is restarted, this process will be triggered. I’m unsure of what might have caused this but I think the corruption occurred when a couple of domain controllers when down suddenly, probably due to an extended power outage or shutdown.
