CA Service Desk services will not start and the error ERROR:"REQUIRED daemon(s) cannot be started because sw_ver_ctl failed to run properly" is seen the stdlog.

Products

• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

The CA Service Desk services will not start and you might see the following errors in the stdlog:

06/11 09:20:18.06 SDM-SERVER pdm_d_mgr          4404 ERROR        daemon_obj.c 1739 Max restarts attempted for sw_ver_ctl You may reset the count by running pdm_d_refresh from the command line. 
06/11 09:20:18.06 SDM-SERVER pdm_d_mgr          4404 ERROR        daemon_obj.c 1755 ServiceDesk is not usable; REQUIRED daemon(s) cannot be started because sw_ver_ctl failed to run properly;
06/11 09:20:25.35 SDM-SERVER boplgin            5860 SIGNIFICANT  boplgin.c 414 Can't connect to server 'domsrvr'; will retry in 30 seconds 

Running pdm_configure also doesn't resolve the problem and it sits there without completing the configuration with the following in the configure.log:

06/11 09:34:07.368 INFO ProcessUtilities.java 440 Executing command: set_pdm_user.exe -U e20570

If we happen to run pdm_ver_nxd -p we might see a parse error which might look like this:

06/12 08:35:45.46 SDM-SERVER Ver_CTRL 2824 EXIT parser.y 785 D:\PROGRA~1\CA\SERVIC~1\site\server_default.ver (4) at "g_mod" (parse error).

Environment

CA Service Desk Manager - All Versions.

Cause

It means that the server_default.ver must be corrupt and needs to be replaced.

Resolution

Copy the NX_ROOT\Service Desk\site server_default.ver file from a working CA Service Desk system and then try starting the services.