Guidance for using UAC and virtual store with MFT

User Account Control (UAC) is present in Windows Server 2008 R2 and other similar operating systems. This is a security infrastructure and one of its features is to divert user data stored in the central Program Files directory to a user location, which is known as virtual store.

If only the Managed File Transfer tools are used to manage the data structures, Managed File Transfer is not affected by UAC and virtual store. However, if the directory structure is changed or rebuilt using standard operating system tools by a non-IBM® MQ administrator, it is possible the new structure will be diverted into a virtual store. This can cause one or more of the following situations:

  • Users, including the IBM MQ administrator, can no longer see files in their expected location.
  • An agent might fail to start, reporting message BFGCL0315 but give no supporting reason code.
  • The log files cannot be found at the location reported by the agent.
  • An agent when started with the -F parameter might fail to start, reporting message:
    
    The current directory is invalid
    .

To correct all of these situations:

  • As an IBM MQ administrator, use the fteDeleteAgent and fteCreateAgent commands to rebuild the agent structure.
  • As an operating system administrator, remove the IBM MQ entries in the virtual store of the affected users. For example, on Windows the location of the virtual store is as follows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\