Bug ID 629626: ASM failures after upgrade due to empty file for most recent policy history

Last Modified: Sep 13, 2023

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP ASM, Install/Upgrade(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
12.1.1, 12.1.2, 12.1.3, 12.1.3.1, 12.1.3.2, 12.1.3.3, 12.1.3.4, 12.1.3.5, 12.1.3.6, 12.1.3.7, 12.1.4, 12.1.4.1, 12.1.5, 12.1.5.1, 12.1.5.2, 12.1.5.3, 12.1.6, 13.0.0, 13.0.0 HF1, 13.0.0 HF2, 13.0.0 HF3, 13.0.1

Fixed In:
13.1.0

Opened: Nov 21, 2016

Severity: 3-Major

Related Article: K92486415

Symptoms

ASM fails to start up correctly after roll-forward upgrade when the most recent policy history file for an active policy is empty. When this condition is encountered, the following messages are seen in /var/log/ts/ts_debug.log: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- asm|INFO|...Can't call method "policy_name" on an undefined value at /usr/local/share/perl5/F5/PolicyHistory.pm line 134. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASM enforcer (BD) will fail with core dump on every repeated attempt to start.

Impact

ASM fails to start up correctly. Errors appear in /var/log/ts/ts_debug.log and ASM enforcer (BD) fails with core dump repeatedly.

Conditions

The most recent policy history file for an active policy is empty. This may have occurred due to a full disk partition. However, if empty policy files were created on previous versions, ASM still fails following an aborted attempt to upgrade using these empty policy files.

Workaround

To correct this issue, the device configuration should be re-upgraded as follows: 1) Reboot to another installation location. 2) Delete the empty policy history file using a command similar to the following: rm /ts/dms/policy/policy_versions/8/57.plc 3) Save UCS file and Reboot. 4) Load UCS file saved in Step 3.

Fix Information

Empty policy history files will not be written. Thus, subsequent roll-forward upgrades will complete successfully.

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips