Confusion About Replication Passwords

  • First of all, this is all on Sql Server 2012 and everything is transactional. We have a separate server as a distributor.

    Yesterday I reset the distribution password because we could not find it. So I used the Update Replication Password wizard in Mgt Studio first on the distributor, our publisher and our 3 subscribers. Replication is working well.

    However, we are having a couple of problems. The first one is that if I go to the publisher and right click on Replication and do Generate Scripts, I get the following error:

    "Sql Server could not generate information about SERVER A

    Login failed for distributor_admin Error 18456."

    I just found out from my manager that the distributor_admin password is different than the password that I set via the Update Replication Password that I set yesterday.

    I thought these were one and the same?? Why are their two different passwords? Can some one explain where these are stored and used and how you change each one? I am confused!

  • Why? That's the architecture. No reason to do more than need to understand this. You can complain to MS, but I doubt they're changing this anytime soon, and certainly not backported.

    The security model for replication is complex. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151868.aspx

    This notes (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151761.aspx#SSMSProcedure) that changing passwords in the dialog doesn't necessarily change them on all instances. You'll need to connect to other instances to do that. Perhaps that's what happened?

  • Sorry stressed out. This has caused a lot of headache.

    But there is a statement that the Update Replication Passwords does not change the linked server settings. How do I change that? Manually?

  • Manually, probably. However, I'd script out the change from the wizard (I think this allows this) and then add an item to the script to change the linked server password.

    http://blog.sqltechie.com/2008/12/spaddlinkedsrvlogin-to-modify-or-add.html

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