Workaround if Red Carpet hangs during Nterprise Linux Services Install

Novell Cool Solutions: Trench
By Keith Schneider

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 19 Jul 2004

The Red Carpet install hangs and eventually times out during the Nterprise Linux Services install if it's unable to ping redcarpet.novell.com, and red carpet will not be functioning on the server.

Here's my solution. Create a bogus entry in the /etc/hosts file for redcarpet.novell.com (I used our gateway address) and the install will be able to reach the next configuration step, where you enter your admin e-mail address. At that point remove the /etc/hosts entry, so when the https call happens after you enter your admin e-mail address, it will work.

Reader Comments

• I've just tried a new install on RHEL 2.1 AS and found this not to be sufficient. I also required ping access to my proxy server (i added a firewall rule for this). The installation process also did not save the proxy details in /etc/ximian/rcd.conf, thus when it restarted rcd could not connect. I added the line proxy=http://host:port where host and port are my proxy server's hostname and port number, and this enabled rcd to start. However, because the installation did not successfully connect to the Red Carpet server, it cannot authenticate. No channels are available in 'rug ch' and thus no updates are listed in 'rug lu'. Adding the above line before the install starts seems to allow things to proceed correctly. Also, the email address you give must be unique - i.e. no other systems registered under the same address (this is a painful restriction, as you must add an alias in your email server for every host you register).
• redcarpet install tries to ping redcarpet.novell.com, if a firewall does not allow that, the install 'hangs'

Novell Cool Solutions (corporate web communities) are produced by WebWise Solutions. www.webwiseone.com