Identity Manager Provisioning Server Service Startup Failure on RHEL from /etc/rc3.d

Products

• CA Identity Manager
• CA Identity Suite

Issue/Introduction

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, the Provisioning Server (imps) service may fail to start automatically upon system reboot. When located in /etc/init.d/ as a symbolic link (often named S99improvisioning), the service fails to initialize, even though it can be started manually by the root user.

Environment

• Product: CA Identity Manager 14.x, 15.x
• Component: Provisioning Server (IMPS)
• Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x, 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs because newer versions of systemd (specifically from systemd-219-19.el7 onward) have changed how they interpret and execute symbolic links for SysVinit services in /etc/init.d/.

For additional technical context from Red Hat, refer to the following article: Systemd cannot read symlinks to SysVinit service scripts

Resolution

To resolve this startup failure, you must replace the symbolic link with a direct file copy of the imps executable within the /etc/init.d/ directory.

Warning: This operation requires root privileges. Ensure you have a backup of the existing symlink before removal.

1. Log in to the server as a root user.
2. Navigate to the init directory:
   bash

    

   cd /etc/init.d

3. Remove the existing symbolic link:
   bash

    

   rm improvisioning

4. Copy the Provisioning Server binary to the init directory as a standard file:
   bash

    

   cp /opt/CA/IdentityManager/ProvisioningServer/bin/imps improvisioning

5. Reload the systemd daemon to recognize the change:
   bash

    

   systemctl daemon-reload

6. Reboot the system to verify the service starts automatically:
   bash

    

   reboot

7. After the reboot, confirm the status of the service using ps or systemctl commands.