Groupwise on SLES9

Published July 5th, 2006, updated February 21st, 2008.

Preface

Here are some short notes on the installation of GroupWise 7.0 Web Access on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES9). The setup consists of a NetWare/Groupwise server that holds the web access agent and a Linux box that runs the web application (a Tomcat container).

Installation

  • get the installation files from the GroupWise 7 Linux CDs (gw700lnx.iso) and make them accessible, say in /tmp/gw700lnx/
  • locate and install the WebAccess RPM, “rpm -ivh novell-groupwise-webaccess-7.0-20050803.i386.rpm”
  • copy the GroupWise directory holding your domain directory from yout NetWare box to some local directory; you’ll need at least your wpdomain.db in, say /tmp/gwweb-root/
  • install Apache2, Tomcat5, J2EE and the “apache2-jakarta-tomcat-connectors” RPMs from the SLES9 installation media
  • ensure that Apache2 runs with Jakarta (mod_jk)
  • run ./install from the GroupWise 7 Linux CDs (/tmp/gw700lnx/install); you’ll need an X server
    • enter your settings, using the local domain directory (/tmp/gwweb-root/)
    • if it crashes during LDAP browsing, enter the values without browsing
    • this creates the essential file /opt/novell/groupwise/webaccess/commgr.cfg
    • and it copies the defaults from /opt/novell/groupwise/webaccess/default to the same directory

Apache Configuration

(assuming /etc/apache2/ as current working directory)

  • add these lines to your webserver’s config (vhosts.d/something.conf), they will include the Novell configuration file:
    <ifmodule mod_jk.c>
        Include /etc/opt/novell/gw/gw.conf
    </ifmodule>
    

Tomcat Configuration

(assuming /usr/share/tomcat/ as current working directory)

  • chmod /opt/novell/groupwise/webaccess/commgr.cfg so that it is readable to Tomcat
  • symlink /var/opt/novell/gw/ to ./webapps/gw, so that Tomcat finds the webapplication

Testing

  • start Tomcat and Apache
  • try to login at http://localhost/gw/
  • check the logs of the involved applications, Tomcat/Catalina (/usr/share/tomcat/logs/), Apache (/var/log/apache2/) and GWWA (/opt/novell/groupwise/webaccess/logs/); when you find the compile error in GWWA’s logs reporting that “draftfldrsel.inc” cannot be found, ignore this (it is at least not the reason why the web application hangs)