Best Practices for Novell GroupWise on Linux
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Transcript of Best Practices for Novell GroupWise on Linux
Best Practices for
Novell® GroupWise® on Linux
Dana Palmer Patti BrooksProduct Lead GroupWise QA EngineerNovell GroupWise Support [email protected]@novell.com
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Topics Covered
• Where to Start
• File Systems
• Run Agents as daemons
• Running Agents as Non-Root
• Administration (ConsoleOne®)
• GWMonitor – GWHA
• General GroupWise® Best Practices
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Where to Start
New to Linux? Dip your foot in the pool– Start by adding redundant GroupWise® components
> Additional WebAccess Application and Agent
> GWIA devoted to POP and IMAP
– Time to go halfway: Introduce your IT staff to Linux> Add a Post Office that supports your IT organization
> Add a GWIA devoted to inbound or outbound mail
– All the way in: Use the Migration Utility to move existing GroupWise pieces
> Create a routine
> Wait to move the CEO/CIO Post Office until comfortable with the procedure
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Which File System Should be Used?
The Most Asked Question at BrainShare® and other trade shows
– The suggested Linux file system for GroupWise® is Ext3. This was announced by GroupWise Product Manager, Alex Evans, at GWAVACon in January of 2009
– The big 3: Ext3 and NSS and Reiserfs are all supported file systems for GroupWise 7 and 8
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Ext3 – Pros and Cons
• Pros
– Better journaling and recovery tools
– Very close to Reiserfs in speed
• Cons
– Not supported using Ext3 with Htree
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Reiserfs – Pros and Cons
• Pros
– Optimized for small files
– Very fast
• Cons
– Tools for recovery are limited
– Future support is questionable
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NSS (Novell Storage Services™)Pros and Cons
• Pros– Moving NSS SAN partitions can be easily done from
NetWare® to Linux– Very good for Novell Cluster Services™ Support
• Cons– Features that make NSS great for all-purpose files system
can add overhead– Note: Turn Salvage OFF
• Additional Information– For best performance add NOATIME and NODIRATIME
parameters to NSS file system parameters. (See the OES SP2 NSS documentation for details.)
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Running GroupWise® Agents as Daemons• For better performance, GroupWise® Linux agents should
be run as daemons
– 10% overhead to run with GUI
– Xwindow not required
• Agents can be monitored by viewing from a Web browser
– Troubleshooting options available from the browser
– Flexibility of viewing from other workstations
Demonstration:Agents from a Browser
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Running Agents as Non-Root User
Running any agent in Linux as root is considered a security risk
– File system access is unlimited
– Crashes to the OS while running as root can have bad consequences to the file system
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Process for Running a GroupWise® Agent as Non-Root• Create a Linux user to run the agents
– useradd -s /bin/false gwagent
• Create /etc/opt/novell/groupwise/agents/uid.conf
– Edit the file with only the name of the agent user
• Delete uid.run from domain, gwia & post office directories
• Bring down all GroupWise Agents (rcgrpwise stop)
• Start the Agents (rcgrpwise start)
• Agents create a uid.run file in domain/po/gwia directory
• Ownership of the files also changes
Demonstration:Running Agents as Non-root
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Administering through ConsoleOne®
• Administration using ConsoleOne on Linux is best done from the server that owns the domain
– Especially true for Gateways which use a number of relative paths
• Administering a GroupWise® system running on Linux can be done with ConsoleOne running in Windows
– Caution needs to be taken in this scenario> See TID 3036467> Setting the Cross Protocol Lock setting on the server will restart Edirectory
• Administering using ConsoleOne on a Linux workstation that has the Novell® Linux Client is not supported and can cause file corruption
Demonstration:Remote GroupWise® Administration
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Using GWMonitor on Linux
The GroupWise® Monitor agent on Linux can help to maximize the uptime of a GroupWise system
– Monitor can be used to automatically restart a GroupWise agent that displays as being down
– The gwha.conf file is used to launch the agents with the correct parameters
Demonstartion:GroupWise® Monitor
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General GroupWise® Best Practices
• Size of post offices
• Disk Access
• Regular Maintenance
• Policies
– Expire and Reduce
– Size Limitations
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Subscribe for OS Updates
Subscribe to update servers for OS
– Available for SLES and OES
– Security Patches
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Top GroupWise® Linux TIDs
Technical Information Documents (TIDs) for GroupWise Linux
3407855 – Moving a Post Office to Linux3248145 – Installing Webaccess (7.x) on SLES 103775622 - Troubleshooting GW Slow Performance7004510 – Webaccess Crashes after update to 8.07004485 – ConsoleOne Crashes on SLES 11
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Review of Key Areas
• You can implement GroupWise® at your own pace• Ext3 is the recommended file system on Linux
– NSS and ReiserFS are supported file systems
• Do not run your GroupWise agents as the root user• ConsoleOne® is best run from the server where the
domain is located• Using GroupWise Monitor can increase your server
uptime• Follow general GroupWise Best Practices
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“Why didn't I migrate sooner?”
Customer feedback
Question and Answer
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