The GroupWise 7 agents include the enhancements and new features listed below.
You can now install and run the agents on Windows 2003 Server.
The agents support the IPV6 protocol when it is available on the server. If it is available, the agent detects it and supports IPV6 by default, along with IPV4.
IPV6 support is available on Linux and Windows. IPV6 support is not currently available on NetWare.
The GroupWise High Availability service makes sure that, if the MTA or the POA goes down for any reason, it starts again automatically. On NetWare, this capability is provided by using a restartable protected address space. On Windows, Microsoft Clustering Services automatically restarts a service that is not responding. On Linux, Novell Cluster Services™ does not include this capability, so it is built into the GroupWise Linux agents.
The GroupWise High Availability service (gwha) is installed automatically, starts when your server boots, and makes sure that the POA, the MTA, and the Internet Agent are running. If it detects that one of these agents is no longer running, it immediately issues the command to start it. The High Availability service uses the Monitor Agent to periodically check the status of the agents that it is responsible for restarting.
For setup instructions, see Enabling the High Availability Service for the Linux GroupWise Agents.
For security reasons, it is preferable that the GroupWise agents not run with root user privileges. For example, if an intruder manages to assume the identity of a GroupWise agent, the intruder gains all the privileges of the commandeered process. If the process is running with root user privileges, then the intruder has root access to your system. If the process is running as a user with minimal privileges, then the intruder has only restricted access to your system. Therefore, your system is more secure if the GroupWise agents do not run as root.
The root user still needs to start the agents, because the agents need to access some root-only resources on startup. However, you can configure the agents to switch to a different user after they start.
To prevent an agent from running as a different user than the one for which it was originally configured, the agent creates a uid.run file in the domain or post office directory that it services. If the user specified in the uid.conf file is changed or if the uid.conf file is deleted, thus changing or removing the information about the user the agent should run as, the agent displays and error message and does not start.
For setup instructions, see Running the Linux GroupWise Agents as a Non-root User and Changing the Non-root User.
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is used by e-mail clients such as Evolution to access mailboxes. You can now configure the POA to communicate with SOAP-enabled e-mail clients as it has already been doing for IMAP e-mail clients.
For setup instructions, see Supporting SOAP Clients
in Post Office Agent
in the GroupWise 7 Administration Guide.
You can now cause the POA and the MTA to bind to a specified IP address when the server where they run uses multiple IP addresses. The specified IP address is associated with all ports used by the agent. Without an exclusive bind, the POA and the MTA bind to all IP addresses available on the server.
You can set this option on the Network Address page of the POA or MTA object in ConsoleOne or by using the /ip startup switch in the agent startup file. The POA has always had the /ip switch; it is a new switch for the MTA.
For setup instructions, see Binding the POA to a Specific IP Address
in Post Office Agent
and Binding the MTA to a Specific IP Address
in Message Transfer Agent
in the GroupWise 7 Administration Guide.
You can now disable administration task processing for the POA on the Agent Settings page of the POA object in ConsoleOne, as well as using the /noada startup switch in the POA startup file.
See Optimizing the POA
in Post Office Agent
in the GroupWise 7 Administration Guide for POA configurations that include disabling administration task processing.
In the past, the POA has created a maximum of 25 message databases (numbered 0 through 24) per post office. Starting in GroupWise 7, the POA creates as many as 255 message databases (numbered 0 through 254) per post office. The larger number of databases speeds up message delivery and minimizes user impact if a database is damaged.
For more information, see Message Databases
Post Office Agent
in the GroupWise 7 Administration Guide.
If a message database is locked (for example, it is in use by a backup program), arriving messages are held in the defer database (ngwdfr.db) until the message database is again available. In GroupWise 6.5, if the defer database is also locked for some reason, large numbers of extraneous messages are generated. This problem no longer occurs in GroupWise 7.