MID Server service starts regardless of whether a failed Upgrade Service still remains leading to deletion of the upgrade service and potentially leaving the MID Server running in a semi-upgraded and corrupt state - Known Error

MID Server service starts regardless of whether a failed Upgrade Service still remains leading to deletion of the upgrade service and potentially leaving the MID Server running in a semi-upgraded and corrupt state Description MID Server service starts regardless of whether a failed Upgrade Service still remains, leading to deletion of the upgrade service, and potentially leaving the MID Server running in a semi-upgraded and corrupt state

If a MID Server upgrade fails during the execution of the ServiceNow Platform Distribution Upgrade service, then the MID Server is deliberately not started, because the upgrade is probably incomplete, with old files that may not have been deleted, or new files that have not been copied yet to the MID Server folder to replace missing files that have already been deleted.

The main MID Server service should not be manually started or automatically started by a server restart, in case the incomplete upgrade service remains, as the MID Server is now corrupt and should not be trusted.

If the main MID Server service is started in this situation:

the incomplete service is deleted the remaining upgrade files that should have been copied to the mid sever folder are deleted the upgrade service files, are deleted from the tmp folder the MID Server then tries to start, and tries to run jobs, which may fail badly due to the installation now being corrupt/incomplete The MID Server is likely to now need a full manual upgrade or re-install.

Steps to Reproduce

1- When encountering a problem like PRB1279578 (MID server auto-upgrade fails while copying files from temp to agent folder on Windows even with ''Application Experience' enabled) during a MID Server upgrade, the upgrade service will stop, and the main service will not be started.

You will now have two Services listed in the windows services (services.msc): ServiceNow MID Server_ ServiceNow Platform Distribution Upgrade ( )

You will also have files in the temp folder e.g. C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\1578473047528-0\agent\ - files that should have been copied to the mid server install folder C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\1578473047528-0\upgrade-wrapper\

2- Start the "ServiceNow MID Server_ " service.

Agent logs will show something like: StartupSequencer Deleted path from upgrade marker, `C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\1578473047528-0`. StartupSequencer Uninstalled previous upgrader Windows service `snc-platform-dist-upgrade-empdpiper-laptop1`.

The MID Server will then try to continue running, with other possible errors due to the corrupted install, plus other symptoms for the execution of particular probes.

Workaround This problem is under review and targeted to be fixed in a future release. Subscribe to this Known Error article to receive notifications when more information will be available.

This technique may allow the upgrade to continue, if you have not tried to start up the main MID Server service already: KB0779816 How to continue a MID Server upgrade after it has crashed in the middle of the ServiceNow Platform Distribution Upgrade service, leaving the MID Server Down and the Service not running

If you see from your instance that an upgrade has failed, or that a MID Server goes down around the time of an instance upgrade, then avoid starting any services again before you have had a chance to investigate the MID Server logs and configuration.

Installing a new clean known good MID Server is a much safer approach if you need a MID Server up again immediately to replace the down one.