During the Web Agent startup process on the UNIX server, the following warning message is logged in the web server log file.
[Warning] SiteMinder Agent
Siteminder Web Agent not having write permissions on host configuration file. Shared secret roll-over may not be supported.
Permission denied. Please assign write privileges to the user apache for the file /opt/CA/webagent/config/SmHost.conf
Why does the webserver user, who is running the web agent, need write permission for the SmHost.conf file?
Release:
Component: SMAPC
This warning message generally can be ignored except for one condition.
The SmHost.conf file needs to have write permission if Shared Secret Rollover is enabled on the policy server. The web agent by default checks if it has the write permission on SmHost.conf file. If it doesn't have then it will print the warning message.
If Shared Secret Rollover is enabled then the webserver user should have write permission to the SmHost.conf file otherwise web agent will not function properly.