Environment
Situation
Resolution
Note: The purpose of configuring a GroupWise 2014 R2
DVA on a Windows 7 workstation is to stabilize a misbehaving or slow or
problematic POA and DVA combination running under Linux. Some users may not have access to another Windows server, so a Windows 7 workstation is fine to use. Until the source of
these issues are resolved, this procedure can quickly stabilize your Post
Office. Be aware you do not have to install a DVA on Windows, it can also be a separate Linux box. The general best practice recommendation is to run a DVA on a separate box from the Post Office server, as their are some conversion processes under the DVA that can be quite CPU intensive. This would be best to avoid issues.
Note: Example names are given for a GroupWise Domain,
Post Office and DVA, substitute these names with your GroupWise domain, Post
Office and DVA names. You may want to perform these steps after hours to
minimize GroupWise user impact.
- Have a fixed IP address for your windows 7 workstation that you will use for the DVA process, if possible login as "Administrator" on this pc.
- Download,
if needed, your GW2014 R2 Windows FULL build from your Micro Focus
customer care portal
or https://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=AA7ZB93KAjc~ . Be aware this http url will change in the future with newer builds, just get the latest shipping GroupWise 2014 R2 Full Windows client build.
- Decompress
the resulting download in a directory of it's own on your Windows 7
workstation.
- Run
setup.exe, in the Installation section, select "GroupWise
Server", Click OK, NEXT, accept the license agreement with the check
box and click NEXT, NEXT, INSTALL. You don't have to check off
"Launch GroupWise Administration console on reboot". CLICK
Finish.
- Exit
the GroupWise installation program.
- Open a
DOS prompt with "Run as administrator", if not logged in as this
user) on the Windows 7 workstation, cd to : c:\Program Files\Novell\GroupWise
Server\admin and execute the command "gwsc -i -dva" (no quotes)
to install a windows dva service. At this point the GroupWise DVA is
not yet configured or started as a windows service yet.
- Start
the GroupWise DVA service under windows by clicking on Start, and in
the Windows search list box type "services" , no quotes, and
click on "services". Click on the Standard tab at the
bottom of the dialog, expand the Name colum, highlight the "GroupWise
DVA" service and START it.
- On the
Linux POA server in which you are creating this DVA for, edit the startup
file of this agent, in your Post Office directory(GW2014 R2 normally
stores it here), the file is called "<YourPostOfficeName>.poa".
Search for the string "--dva1ipadd" , no quotes, make sure
there is NO semi-colon in front of this line, and after this switch put a
space and then the ip address of your Windows 7 workstation that runs the
GroupWise DVA service. Also in this same startup file search for
"--dva1port", no quotes, and make sure there is NO semi-colon
and put a space after this switch on the port number of 8301 which is the default
port for the DVA. SAVE and replace the POA startup file you just
edited and RESTART the POA. You can restart the POA by going to the
GroupWise Linux server terminal as "root" and typing the command
"rcgrpwise status", if for example you have a Domain called
"Utah" and a Post Office called "Provo". You
should see :
Checking status [gwadminservice]
running
Checking status [utah]
running
Checking status [provo.utah]
running
Checking status [dva.provo]
running
Checking status [gwia.utah]
running
9. So now shut down the dva service on your GroupWise
Linux box by issuing the command:
rcgrpwise stop dva.provo
10. Since you will no longer run the DVA that
currently runs on your Linux Post Office server, edit the gwha.conf file in the
/etc/opt/novell/groupwise/ directory, but first make a COPY of this file to the
name gwha.conf.BACKUP. When you edit the gwha.conf file, remove the
section that looks like this example with my Provo POA DVA :
[gwdva.provo]
server=<pathToTheGWDVA-binary-file>
command=/etc/init.d/grpwise
startup=<path to your post office
delay=2
wait=6
NOW SAVE and replace the gwha.conf file, so next time
you restart GroupWise or the server, it will not load the dva service on this
Linux box, it is running on the Windows 7 workstation you already configured.
11. So now restart the Provo POA, issue the command :
rcgrpwise restart provo.utah
12. If you look in the GroupWise 2014 R2 Web admin
portal, "System", "Document Viewer Agent", if you DO
have a visible configured DVA, then note the NAME and EDIT it and verify and
change the IP ADDRESS ( and port to 8301) to point to the Windows 7 box you
installed you new DVA to. Click OK, then CLOSE. Also under the
properties of the Post Office agent, "Document Viewer Agent" tab,
make sure this same DVA name is listed under "DVA 1", If it is NOT
listed there, then choose this DVA name from the drop down list and CLICK SAVE.
13. (Optional as needed) If you look in the GroupWise
2014 R2 Web admin portal, "System", "Document Viewer
Agents", if you DO NOT have a visible configured DVA, then click on
NEW, give the DVA a name, does not matter what name you give it, like
"myDVA", type the ip Address of the Windows 7 box and leave the port
at the default 8301, CLICK OK. Also under the properties of the Post
Office agent, "Document Viewer Agent" tab, make sure this same DVA
name is listed under "DVA 1", if it is not listed then choose it from
the DVA1 drop down arrow. CLICK SAVE.
We have had issues in the past with the auto launch of a
default DVA with no "configured" DVA, so that is why we create one
reference to it in the GroupWise Web admin console.
14. It may be a good idea if you have to make some of
these changes listed in the GroupWise Web admin console with regard to the DVA,
to at this point restart the POA as discussed in step # 10 and # 13.
Remember do this step after hours to not affect your GroupWise users.
15. If you have GroupWise Webaccess installed , you
will want to configure it to use the new windows DVA , do this by going to your
Linux server that has GroupWise Webaccess installed on and cd to :
/var/opt/novell/groupwise/webaccess/ and edit the
webacc.cfg.
Search for "Provider.DVA.1" and make the necessary
changes :
Provider.DVA.1.ip=<yourWindows7BoxIPAddress>
Provider.DVA.1.port=8301
SAVE and replace the
previous version of this file now.
16. Then you need to
restart Tomcat on your SLES11 Linux box, with "rcnovell-tomcat6" if
you are on OES11 or "rctomcat6 restart" if you are on SLES11 with no
OES installed.