cannot create a publisher

Question

Folks,

When I created a publisher with a remote distributor via wizard, I got an error of "The server '(null)' is already defined as a Distributor. To reconfigure the server as a Distributor, you must first uninstall the existing ...". I checked the distributor server and found the publisher was there. Does anybody have idea of what is wrong with the settings?

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi awt7532,

According to your description, you fail to create a publication. The issue could be due to that the distribution server is already configured as a linked server and is marked for replication before you set up the replication. In this case, to troubleshoot the issue, you could delete the linked server .

However, if the distribution server is not configured as linked server, you could use sp_dropdistributor to drop the distribution server and set up the replication again.

Regards,
Michelle Li

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Answer 2

Thank you for your help. We were stuck at the linked server. This url https://sqlaj.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/cannot-drop-server-repl_distributor-because-it-is-used-as-a-distributor/ helped me delete the stubborn linked server.

Thanks for help.