Avoiding WebAccess URL Problems in GroupWise 7.0 Upgrade

Novell Cool Solutions: Tip
By Jesse Pretorius

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 11 Jul 2006

Problem

When upgrading from GroupWise 6.x to 7.0 you'll find that the WebAccess URL has changed from http://webaccessserver/servlet/webacc to http://webaccessserver/gw/webacc

For one of my customers this was a problem due to the fact that there were numerous references to the /servlet/webacc URL on their Intranet and we didn't have access to the source code to make the required changes to the web pages.

Solution

I opted to modify Apache2's configuration to make it rewrite the request to /servlet/webacc to /gw/webacc. The idea was to ensure that the initial URL could continue working, but that subsequent URL's should go to the proper /gw/webacc URL.

To do this, I modified httpd.conf with the following (at the end of the file):

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/rewrite.nlm
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule /servlet/webacc(.*) /gw/webacc [R]

After that, I used a simple "ap2webdn" to shut down apache2 and then "ap2webup" to start it back up - and it worked a treat!

Note: This solution was tested in an environment with NetWare 6.5 and GroupWise 7.0.

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