Smarts NCM: Can we change the UID and GID for pgdba user? Tcpdump also requests to use the same UID and GID as pgdba user

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


This article explains what to do if the pgdba user GID and UID used by Smarts NCM conflicts with the tcpdump requests for the same GID and UID

Tcpdump requests to use UID and GID 72, which is the same as pgdba user required by Smarts NCM.

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - NCM

Resolution

The UID and GID 72 for pgdba user cannot be changed, as it is hard-coded for the Smarts NCM database. However, the Smarts NCM servers (AS/DB/CS) do not monitor any TCP/IP packets, so you can either disable or change tcpdump by doing either of the following:

• Disable or uninstall tcpdump
• Change the tcpdump settings so that it does not conflict with the pgdba user as follows:

1. Open /etc/passwd and look for tcpdump. Change 72 to 75 or to a UID which is not in use.
2. Open /etc/group and look for tcpdump. Change 72 to 75 or to a UID which is not in use.

Additional Information

The tcpdump is a most powerful and widely used command-line packets sniffer or package analyzer tool which is used to capture or filter TCP/IP packets that received or transferred over a network on a specific interface. It is available under most of the Linux/Unix based operating systems. tcpdump also gives the option to save captured packets in a file for future analysis.