Unable to remove eDirectory because instances still exist.

  • 3735149
  • 10-Jan-2007
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment


Novell eDirectory 8.8 for Linux
Novell eDirectory 8.8 for Solaris

Situation

Trying to backrev eDirectory or uninstall the eDirectory packages returns an error message about previous instances still being configured by the current eDirectory packages. While they may not have come specifically from this install they are still part of the current system and show up via `ndsmanage` and that is where the problem starts.
Error: Some instances of eDirectory servers were instantiated using this set of binaries. Cannot proceed with uninstall

Resolution

`ndsmanage` reads all about the instances it configures from ($NDSHOME is, by default, '/') $NDSHOME/etc/opt/novell/eDirectory/conf/.edir/ which holds one file per user who has set up instances. The file (per user) is named instances. so for 'root' the file is instances.0. This file contains one line per instance instantiated by the user and that line points to the absolute path of the nds.conf file (for that instance).

It is not advised that you remove the eDirectory packages without knowing the ramifications of doing so. eDirectory will not work after you do this until you at least reinstall the packages. Also if you lose your NICI information any information encrypted with those data could potentially be lost forever. Be sure to have a full backup of your eDirectory information before doing this (Google for CoolSolution ndsrc.pl for a script to do this on Linux and Solaris).

To resolve this issue you can either remove lines from all instances.* files in the path listed above or you can move those files to another location. If you do not plan on using these eDirectory instances ever again you can even delete those files completely.