SuSE 9.3 - administration server does not answer

[mephisto]

HI,

I installed the community version on SuSE 9.3 and received no errors during install. I can open the login window to the SAC, but when I click on Login, I get this:

Anmeldung konnte nicht durchgeführt werden
Der Administrationsserver antwortet nicht.
Ein Verbindungsfehler ist aufgetreten

Why does the administration server not answer?

omrc gives me this:

Code: Select all

/opt/scalix/bin/omrc : Scalix appears to be running.
If you wish to restart Scalix cleanly, run "omshut" or
kill the following processes, then run "omrc".

root      7514     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/advmail.sckd
root      7532     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omdbmon -p 30
root      7540     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omslapd
root      7544     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omsmtpd
root      7546     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omsmtpd
root      7559     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 in.imap41d -d
root      7582     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 pop3.server
root      7585     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omscan.server -F /var/opt/scalix/sys/omscan.cfg
scalix    7482     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/omlicmon
scalix    7484     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/omsessd
scalix    7487     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/omctmon
scalix    7492     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/omsmdm
scalix    7495     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/notif.mon
scalix    7500     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/queue.manager
scalix    7504     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 idel.server
scalix    7527     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omnsdm
scalix    7528     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omdrs
scalix    7529  7528  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omdrs
scalix    7530  7527  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 /opt/scalix/bin/omnssck
scalix    7533  7528  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 omdrs
scalix    7547     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 mime.control
scalix    7565     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 unix.out
scalix    7567     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 req.server
scalix    7569     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 error.manager
scalix    7570     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 local.delivery
scalix    7575     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 print.server
scalix    7576     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 test.server
scalix    7577     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 search.server
scalix    7579     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 service.router
scalix    7580     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 cda.server
scalix    7581  7579  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 defer.manager -D
scalix    7586     1  0 14:10 ?        00:00:00 archiver

Thanks,

Frederik

[mephisto]

I had a nice chat with one of the guys of the German support team. He said I shouldn't have installed the SuSE tomcat5, because it's too old and does not run as root. You should use the installer to install the tar.gz that comes with the package.
I tried that and got the same results. Well, I'll give Fedora a chance. Never liked SuSE anyway.

[florian]

;-) well, i'm not officially part of the support team, but anyway, i guess we talked.

how did you replace your suse-tomcat with the scalix-delivered tomcat? did you actually reinstall the scalix admin console afterwards? how do you start your tomcat - the rctomcat script that is provided by suse should not be used in any case as it always starts tomcat as a non-root user.

you should also check your $TOMCAT_HOME/logs/caa.log log file for more details on the fault - in worst case, please post the part of the logfile that contains the error and possibly some lines around it (the java exception listing) to the forum...

i share your hesitation to "like" suse, but usually the tomcat part is not the worst thing about it... :-)

Florian.

[mephisto]

I completely uninstalled the SuSE tomcat and the scalix server. Then I reinstalled the server from scratch letting it instsall the tomcat tarball. The tomcat server ran with root privileges, there were no residuals from the SuSE tomcat server.

Right now I'm batteling with fedora, because it does not seem to have a proper package manager like Debian's aptitude or dselect. This is very inconvinient. Are there any plans to support debian in the future?

[florian]

actually, the yum command line tool can handle updates and install fedora packages from online including dependencies. it does not have a user interface though.

no support for debian is planned at this time. risking a long discussion here, probably the most important reason for not pushing too hard for it is the fact that the community lacks common ground in finding common sense on "what debian is" ... :-)

is it sarge-stable? (probably most would consider that outdated...)
is it the latest "unstable" build? (not really what our QA guys could rely on in their monthlong testcycles for every new release..)
is it ubuntu? (seems to become more popular than debian itself, according to some...)

or.... would we want to go for gentoo right away?

i'd clearly be interested to find where your issues with the original suse install were as what you did should normally work - i guess you probably tore down the system, correct?

did you possibly do any hostname changes during/after install?

[mephisto]

Yes, I scrapped the SuSE install. I have a local domain called "lokal", and my PC has the hostname mephisto.lokal. I had to enter a mail domain with a TLD, so I chose "lokal.x" - could this be the cause?
I can't remember if I changed the hostname, though. I think I've fiddled around with my /etc/hosts file, but I'm not sure. I definitely didn't change it during or after the last install, so I guess this is not the cause.

[florian]

actually yes.

i believe suse 9.3 by default employs a mDNS resolver where .local domain names will be resolved through multicast requests. therefore, hostname resolution does not properly work and SAC internal communication depends on that.

mDNS can be turned off, if required, through some setting in /etc/host.conf.

hard to drill into now that the install is gone. Fedora should be easier this way, as I think they don't enable mDNS by default.

-- f.

[mephisto]

Well, can you believe it - Redhat has the same problem. At least now I've narrowed it down: it seems that my JDK 1.5.0 caused the problem. I can use the webmail, but SAC login fails.

I installed JDK 1.5.0 following this howto: http://www.fedorafaq.org/#java - I did this, because I couldn't find JDK 1.4.2 with yum - how can I install that?

OK, this is what my scalix-caa_log.2005-08-11.txt says when I try to log in:

Code: Select all

2005-08-11 02:36:46 StandardWrapperValve[dispatcher]: Servlet.service() for servlet dispatcher threw exception
javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactoryConfigurationError: Provider org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl not found
        at javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance(Unknown Source) ....
< -----SNIP------>

For some reason this xalan thing seems to be unknown either to my JDK, Tomcat or Scalix.

[florian]

Ah,, now we are getting closer.

JDK 1.5.x is currently not supported by Scalix. I believe this is mentioned in the Release Notes.

You can download a Sun Java JDK 1.4.2 as a RPM from java.sun.com.... this is our recommended version. Licensing restrictions on Sun's side restrict both the Fedora/RedHat people and ourselves from redistributing the JDK.

Good Luck...

[mephisto]

OK, that was it, I'm up and running. Looks very smooth. I will show this to my boss tomorrow.

Good N8 ;-)

[Guest]

To add to what Florian was saying, Fedora Core 3/4 and RHEL4 both have an mDNS responder which is turned on but it doesn't seem to cause the problems with the Apple zeroconf .local domain that it does on SuSE.

Personally, I've always gone for "proper" domains so that when my mail escapes into the outside world domains in various headers are at least meaningful and unique. (Imagine the difficulty of tracing messages if two organisations decided that they'd have the same domain -- apple.local for apple corp and apple computer in their long-running trademark dispute is the first one that springs to mind.)

[jch]

(that was me, jch, talking about mDNS and .local, btw, sorry)