Supported methods to administer GroupWise on Linux

  • 7002459
  • 27-Jan-2009
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell GroupWise 8
Novell GroupWise 7
Novell ConsoleOne 1.3.6
Linux all versions

Situation

Supported methods to administer a GroupWise system in a Linux environment or mixed Linux, NetWare and Windows environment.

Documentation suggests  that you can run ConsoleOne one either Windows or Linux to administer the GroupWise system.

The same answer applies to both ConsoleOne and GWCHECK.

Resolution

Option 1 Windows.
A GroupWise system on Linux can be safely administered from a Windows workstation.  The following action needs to be performed in the following tid 377653.  This is true even for a Samba share.  If ConsoleOne is on a windows box  the NCP the protocol is used, and the client settings apply.



Option 2. Linux.
On Linux it is always okay to run ConsoleOne directly from the GroupWise domain server, connected to that domain.  This would be done either directly from the Console, VNC, or ssh -x.  These methods are running ConsoleOne on the GroupWise domain server not remotely. 

ConsoleOne on Linux should NOT be used to connect to a GroupWise domain on a different Linux box or a NetWare box.  Because of how the Linux client and the NCP protocal work together Novell cannot guarantee that we have locked the database completely.  It is possible that a process on the Linux GroupWise domain server could undermine the lock from the remote server and corrupt the database.  This is simply a change to how the GroupWise system is administered.

Customers running Linux have found great success with ssh -x and then running ConsoleOne.  It does require ConsoleOne to be installed on each GroupWise domain server on linux.


Additional Information

There is some debate  if this is still a problem for a somba share where the Novell client is NOT involved.

Local paths need to be set to the Linux path instead of a drive mapping.  Log locations and SSL paths are locating that need to be set to a Linux path instead of a drive mapping.  The exception is the database location.  It is okay to show a mapped drive in properties of the domain or post office, it will not effect the agent (POA or MTA) running against it on Linux.