Symantec Directory : dxserver init call causing directory to shutdown

Products

• CA Directory

Issue/Introduction

You may come across a situation when making a configuration change in DSA and performing an 'init' operation on that DSA for the change to take effect causes it to shutdown when it should not.

In alarm and/or trace log, you only see:

[64] 20220506.082316.406 DSA_I1230 DSA reloading configuration
[64] 20220506.082317.413 DSA_E1280 Error in initialization files
[64] 20220506.082317.413 DSA_I1240 DSA shutting down

Environment

Release : 14.1

Component : CA Directory

Resolution

This is by design. Not all configuration changes are supported by 'init' operation. If the change you have made is dependent on 'cache' value (which is basically stored in your system RAM when DSA is originally started), you will experience this problem.

e.g. After the DSA was started, if you have decided to change 'set use-rdn-index = false;' to 'set use-rdn-index = true;' OR if it this parameter was not present and being defined for the first time, a simply 'dxserver init <dsaname>' will cause it to stop.

If you look at the WARN log (apart from alarm or trace log) of this DSA in question, you will see something similar to:

[64] 20220506.082317.413 ERROR : Syntax Error: Line 25 in /opt/CA/Directory/dxserver/config/servers/my_dsa.dxi near 'true'
Cannot change use-rdn-index after loading

As the message says, once the cache is loaded (and this happens during DSA startup sequence), it cannot be changed on the fly.

The solution would be to re-start the DSA so the cache can be properly loaded with this new parameter value.

The same is true for any schema change(s).

e.g. you add or modify an attribute definition in one of the $DXHOME/config/schema/filename.dxc file and perform 'dxserver init <dsaname>', this will also result into DSA going offline for the same reason as stated above.