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(October 2023) - How to Solve Obtaining SAS Metadata Repository information: FAILED During Content Assessment Run

SAS Content Assessment is run as a recommended practice when a Upgrade in Place (UIP) is considered. This utility not only evaluate an existing SAS environment but also lists a html report that lists any potential issues and incorrect configurations. The goal is to get those flagged items resolved before proceeding with the UIP. This utility could be downloaded from SAS' site at https://support.sas.com/downloads/package.htm?pid=2465 (require your SAS login profile).

A content assessment run produces two main logs "systemEvaluation-<date-of-run>.log" and "init.log" in the Content Assessment folder.

Sometimes Content Assessment (CA) run stages end up with SUCCESSFUL status yet at the last step fails with the error "Obtaining SAS Metadata Repository information: FAILED"

Following is the quick troubleshooting steps to take.

  1. Review the systemEvaluation/<date>.log for any error(s). In our test case we found the following error:

    Error in systemEvaluation log

  2. Next review the "init.log" to find any corresponding error and usually a more error trapping and explanation. What we found in our case was:

    Error in init.log

    Following are the possible resolutions to be attempted in order:

    1. Most likely the problem is caused by insufficient permissions for the user running the script.

    2. Increase Java memory options (-JREOPTIONS) to new value: -Xms2048M -Xmx2048M. You may run:

      PROC OPTIONS OPTION=CONFIG VALUE;
RUN;

      To determine the configuration files SAS looks at and in which order to determine which SAS configuration file to change JREOPTIONS values. Preference is to make changes in a SASV9_USERMODS.cfg file which you may comment out after the CA run is complete. Create a backup of any SAS configuration file is strongly recommended as well.

    3. The SAS session did not initialize in utf8 encoding for example .../sashome/SASFoundation/9.4/bin/sas_u8 was not touched as part of configuration file. Ensure that SAS is started with UTF-8 encoding.

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