GroupWise gwdva process causing 100% CPU utilization on virtualized Linux server

  • 7000192
  • 23-Apr-2008
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

GroupWise WebAccess 7.03
Novell GroupWise WebAccess 8.0
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (Linux)
VMWare ESX server


Situation

Users unable to login to GroupWise WebAccess
SLES 10 SP1 server running virtualized on VMware ESX server
GroupWise gwdva parent process causing 100% CPU utilization on Linux server
All GroupWise gwdva worker threads have died or are in <defunct> 
status
Error: Request rejected because all threads are busy

Resolution

Novell made changes to address this issue in GroupWise 7.03 Hot Patch 3 and GroupWise 8.0 Hot Patch 2, which has resolved the problem for most (but not all) customers. 

Workaround : To workaround the issue with the gwdva parent thread causing 100% utilization, you can temporarily disable the gwdva, which will force the webaccess agent to handle the document viewing requests, by doing the following:


1) Edit your /etc/opt/novell/groupwise/gwha.conf file and comment out the gwdva section (by adding a "#" character at the beginning of each line), as below:

#[gwdva.sles-server]

#server = /opt/novell/groupwise/agents/bin/gwdva

#command = /etc/init.d/grpwise

#startup = gwdva.dva

#delay = 2

#wait = 10


2) Edit your Webaccess agent startup file (normally /opt/novell/groupwise/agents/share/webac70a.waa and add the following switch:

/gwdvadisable


3) Stop and restart your groupwise agents by changing to the /etc/init.d directory and running ./grpwise stop and ./grpwise start