NICI Initialization failed: -1471, Exiting... when starting eDirectory (ndsd)

  • 7011966
  • 15-Mar-2013
  • 09-Dec-2016

Environment

Open Enterprise Server 2015 SP1 (OES2015 SP1)
NetIQ eDirectory
ndsd

Situation

Error -1471 when starting ndsd
NICI Initialization failed: -1471, Exiting...

Resolution

Reinstall NICI, or remove and then reinstall NICI.

When updating OES, start YaST/YaST2  | Software Management | Search for NICI | select nici or nici64 for 64 bit and select update | select Accept.

When forcing an update on OES, first check for the installed versions of nici, "zypper se nici". Then proceed to force install each required version for example:

zypper in --force nici

zypper in --force nici64


For StandAlone eDirectory use the rpm that was used to install or patch eDirectory.  From a command line do:
rpm -Uvh --nodeps <nici rpm>

Example:
rpm -Uvh --nodeps nici64-2.7.6.rpm

Cause

NICI verification failure on start up.

As per the documentation:
This error was introduced with the FIPS 140 certified NICI and is present regardless of the certification level of NICI on non-NetWare platforms. Upon loading or being instantiated by a process, NICI runs a set of tests for module integrity as well as cryptographic process integrity. If one of these tests fail, NICI puts itself in an inoperable state and returns this error.