8201 errors in GroupWise client and Post Office Agent

  • 7011384
  • 15-Nov-2012
  • 15-Nov-2012

Environment

Novell GroupWise 8 Post Office Agent
Novell GroupWise 8 client for Windows


Situation

Users randomly seeing 8201 errors in the GroupWise 8 client

Error on the Post Office Agent: "the database function <function number> reported error [8201] on userxxx.db"
Error on the Post Office Agent: "the database function <function number> reported error [8201] on msgxx.db" 
Error on the Post Office Agent: "Access denied. Caller is not allowed access to a file [8201]"

Resolution

The customer was running Carbonite backup software on their Windows server, and every time there was a change to any file in the post office directory structure, Carbonite would lock the changed file and backup that file to the cloud, which would cause the 8201 error if the POA tried to access that file during the time that Carbonite had it locked.

Note: backup solutions that continually monitor and upload new copies of files after every change (such as Carbonite, Mozy, etc) should NOT be run against the GroupWise post office directory structure, because they can interfere with the POA accessing the files within the GroupWise message store.  See the GroupWise documentation for information on how to successfully backup your GroupWise post office directory structure.