Administration Console server very slow to install - taking up to 60 minutes

  • 7007747
  • 01-Feb-2011
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell Access Manager 3.1 Access Administration
Novell Access Manager 3.1 Access Manager Support Pack 2
Admin Console installation on Windows and Linux

Situation

Admin Console installation initiated on Linux platform (SLES10, 11 x86-64 and x86-32 as well as Windows OS). After entering the credentials, the install appeared to run extremely slowly. The log files were being updated every few minutes, indicating that the install had not crashed.

Looking at the details in the install log files, the devman install log file showed huge delays creating the server certificates. The following shows an example of these large delays:

Jan 14, 2011 1:04:56 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.User userLogin INFO: Logged in user cn=admin,o=novell, hashcode: 16617866
Jan 14, 2011 1:08:19 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=test-signing
Jan 14, 2011 1:13:19 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=test-encryption
Jan 14, 2011 1:18:41 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=test-connector
Jan 14, 2011 1:24:43 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=test-provider
Jan 14, 2011 1:30:45 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=test-consumer
Jan 14, 2011 1:35:19 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=test-stunnel
Jan 14, 2011 1:35:19 PM com.volera.vcdn.application.sc.core.KeyManager createCertEntry INFO: creating cert context ou=configCA
Jan 14, 2011 1:41:31 PM
...

It was also noticed that tomcat restarted after each server certificate was created - this restart added to the install time.

Resolution

Since the problem only occurs with an initial, fresh install of the Admin Console, allow up to 60 minutes for the initial Admin Console install. Subsequent installs of secondary Admin Console servers will be much faster, of the order of max 10 minutes. Upgrades to patches do not need to create new certificates and will also be fast.

The issue has been raised with development and will be addressed in future versions.