While Novell GroupWise continues to offer platform flexibility on both the client and server side, there are particular benefits to running your GroupWise back-end on Linux. If you're interested in making the move, attend this session for must-have details. Members of the renowned Novell Support team will share their expertise and give you quick, easy tips for managing GroupWise on Linux.

1. Best Practices for
Novell GroupWise on Linux
® ®
Dana Palmer Patti Brooks
Product Lead GroupWise QA Engineer
Novell GroupWise Support pattib@novell.com
dmpalmer@novell.com

2. Topics Covered
• Where to Start
• File Systems
• Run Agents as daemons
• Running Agents as Non-Root
• Administration (ConsoleOne ) ®
• GWMonitor – GWHA
• General GroupWise Best Practices ®
2 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. Where to Start
New to Linux? Dip your foot in the pool
– Start by adding redundant GroupWise components ®
> Additional WebAccess Application and Agent
> GWIA devoted to POP and IMAP
– Time to go halfway: Introduce your IT staff to Linux
> Add a Post Office that supports your IT organization
> Add a GWIA devoted to inbound or outbound mail
– All the way in: Use the Migration Utility to move existing
GroupWise pieces
> Create a routine
> Wait to move the CEO/CIO Post Office until comfortable with the procedure
3 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

4. Which File System Should be Used?
The Most Asked Question at BrainShare and other ®
trade shows
– The suggested Linux file system for GroupWise is Ext3.
®
This was announced by GroupWise Product Manager,
Alex Evans, at GWAVACon in January of 2009
– The big 3: Ext3 and NSS and Reiserfs are all supported
file systems for GroupWise 7 and 8
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5. Ext3 – Pros and Cons
• Pros
– Better journaling and recovery tools
– Very close to Reiserfs in speed
• Cons
– Not supported using Ext3 with Htree
5 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

6. Reiserfs – Pros and Cons
• Pros
– Optimized for small files
– Very fast
• Cons
– Tools for recovery are limited
– Future support is questionable
6 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

7. NSS (Novell Storage Services ) ™
Pros and Cons
• Pros
– Moving NSS SAN partitions can be easily done from
NetWare to Linux ®
– Very good for Novell Cluster Services Support
™
• Cons
– Features that make NSS great for all-purpose files system
can add overhead
– Note: Turn Salvage OFF
• Additional Information
– For best performance add NOATIME and NODIRATIME
parameters to NSS file system parameters. (See the OES
SP2 NSS documentation for details.)
7 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

8. Running GroupWise Agents ®
as Daemons
• For better performance, GroupWise Linux agents should
®
be run as daemons
– 10% overhead to run with GUI
– Xwindow not required
• Agents can be monitored by viewing from a Web browser
– Troubleshooting options available from the browser
– Flexibility of viewing from other workstations
8 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

9. Demonstration:
Agents from a Browser

10. Running Agents as Non-Root User
Running any agent in Linux as root is considered
a security risk
– File system access is unlimited
– Crashes to the OS while running as root can have bad
consequences to the file system
10 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

11. Process for Running a GroupWise ®
Agent as Non-Root
• Create a Linux user to run the agents
– useradd -s /bin/false gwagent
• Create /etc/opt/novell/groupwise/agents/uid.conf
– Edit the file with only the name of the agent user
• Delete uid.run from domain, gwia & post office directories
• Bring down all GroupWise Agents (rcgrpwise stop)
• Start the Agents (rcgrpwise start)
• Agents create a uid.run file in domain/po/gwia directory
11
• Ownership of the files also changes
© Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

12. Demonstration:
Running Agents as Non-root

13. Administering through ConsoleOne ®
• Administration using ConsoleOne on Linux is best done
from the server that owns the domain
– Especially true for Gateways which use a number of relative
paths
• Administering a GroupWise system running on Linux
®
can be done with ConsoleOne running in Windows
– Caution needs to be taken in this scenario
> See TID 3036467
> Setting the Cross Protocol Lock setting on the server will restart Edirectory
• Administering using ConsoleOne on a Linux
workstation that has the Novell Linux Client is not®
supported and can cause file corruption
13 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

14. Demonstration:
Remote GroupWise Administration
®

15. Using GWMonitor on Linux
The GroupWise Monitor agent on Linux can help to
®
maximize the uptime of a GroupWise system
– Monitor can be used to automatically restart a GroupWise
agent that displays as being down
– The gwha.conf file is used to launch the agents with the
correct parameters
15 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

16. Demonstartion:
GroupWise Monitor
®

17. General GroupWise Best Practices ®
• Size of post offices
• Disk Access
• Regular Maintenance
• Policies
– Expire and Reduce
– Size Limitations
17 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

18. Subscribe for OS Updates
Subscribe to update servers for OS
– Available for SLES and OES
– Security Patches
18 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

19. Top GroupWise Linux TIDs ®
Technical Information Documents (TIDs)
for GroupWise Linux
3407855 – Moving a Post Office to Linux
3248145 – Installing Webaccess (7.x) on SLES 10
3775622 - Troubleshooting GW Slow Performance
7004510 – Webaccess Crashes after update to 8.0
7004485 – ConsoleOne Crashes on SLES 11
19 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

20. Review of Key Areas
• You can implement GroupWise at your own pace
®
• Ext3 is the recommended file system on Linux
– NSS and ReiserFS are supported file systems
• Do not run your GroupWise agents as the root user
• ConsoleOne is best run from the server where the
®
domain is located
• Using GroupWise Monitor can increase your server
uptime
• Follow general GroupWise Best Practices
20 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

21. “Why didn't I migrate sooner?”
Customer feedback
21 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

22. Question and Answer

24. Unpublished Work of Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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