Tip o' the day: 12/08/2006 Death of a RMS Server, End of a Career.

You've done everything wrong and you know it. You put RMS on a machine with multiple services running on it, you haven't backed up your SLC, private key, and RMS databases, and now your server just crashed...and crashed hard. It's dead...flat lined...no chance of recovery. Now what? You have a bunch of documents that you really, really need or your going to be out on the street corner in the cold.

Long shot solution: Assuming that you can actually get your mits on these documents, you can open them in notepad. Its going to be a mess in there, but you should see the publishing license in plain text (well the part that is important to you right now, anyways). Now find the word 'owner'.

It should take you to a spot that looks like this:

<OWNER><OBJECT><ID type="Windows" /><NAME>savior.of.your.career@yourcompany.com</NAME></OBJECT></OWNER>

Very nicely walk over to this persons desk and ask them to open this document, and remove the permissons from it. Assuming that their DRM directory is still in tact, owners will be able to open the content they have created even when the RMS server goes down.

Once you have all of the documents recovered, and have paid for all of the owners pizza party you are going to throw them, you can put another RMS server online, and follow best business practices from here on out, hopefully with your boss being none the wiser.

- Jason