Problems starting agents by the rcgrpwise script.

Starting agents by the rcgrpwise script shows either immediately failing of few agents (a domain, a PO or a gateway) or when you check status via rcgrpwise status, you see one or more instances listed as unused.

When you start failing instance manually directly by a binary from /opt/novell/groupwise/agents with @statup configuration file, it gets into a segfault status.

When you start failing instance manually directly by a binary from /opt/novell/groupwise/agents with a -home -show switch, it is started but when you want to unload it from the GUI interface, it ends in the segfault state.

When you start agents via the rcgrpwise script, this consults the gwha.conf file that is located in /etc/opt/novell/groupwise directory. When you see the same symptoms, then a problem is within this gwha.conf file. There might be any typos or white (invisible) characters that cause script to fail starting some of the instance listed in any sections. Usually when the script find problems let`s say in the third section, then it does not check / continue any next section behind the faulty one and what you see is that first two instances were successfully started but the rest is listed as failed or unused.

Those problems within gwha.conf file might be caused by some types of text editors that you could have used to edit entries in the file, or when you failed to specify locations during configure agents part of the install script. You can either try to find out any obvious typos in the text or simply rename existing gwha.conf file and re-run the configure agents part. That creates new gwha.conf file for you.

After you finish with the adding new domains / PO / gateways in the configuration file (gwha.conf), then you can check all added entries by rcgrpwise status command. It will list all entries that you added. Each added section will have a bit different header syntax than what you might see any time later, for example: 

 

[@<post_office>.poa]

 

You can start each instance one-by-one as they get listed from a rcgrpwise status output on a screen. For instance,

 

rcgrpwise start @<post_office>.poa

 

After you check the instance status again, you will notice that the header part gets converted into more familiar syntax, for instance:

 

[<post_office>.<domain>]

 

When you want later to double-check a content of the gwha.conf file by any text editor, make sure that there are 2 CR after end of last line in each section and there is one CR and the very end of the text file. That is important as people sometimes copy / past at the end some section and do not include the CR at the end of very last line.