Fixing errors while starting networker service in Linux

I received a concern from backup admins that they were unable to start EMC networker service on a Linux VM.

I tried to start the service, the command ran but there was no output and the service did not start.

/etc/init.d/networker start

I then checked the log file daemon.raw under the path /nsr/logs and found the below error logs:

nsrexecd RAP critical 162 Attributes '%s' and/or '%s' of the %s resource do not resolve to the machine's hostname '%s'. To correct the error, it may be necessary to delete the %s database
138906 1487648740 5 3 20 3141699360 60636 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd RAP critical 162 Attributes '%s' and/or '%s' of the %s resource do not resolve to the machine's hostname '%s'. To correct the error, it may be necessary to delete the %s database. 5 11 9 2335:name 11 17 51954:my hostname 11 11 89897:NSRLA 12 25 net-client.emrsn.org 11 11 89897:NSRLA
6919 1487648740 5 1 2 2885678848 60636 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd SYSTEM critical 52 Unable to register %ld version %ld on tcp. Aborting. 2 2 6 390436 2 1 1
90307 1487648740 5 5 0 3141699360 60636 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd NSR critical 43 Unable to start the authentication service. 0
138906 1487648790 5 3 20 2653454400 60673 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd RAP critical 162 Attributes '%s' and/or '%s' of the %s resource do not resolve to the machine's hostname '%s'. To correct the error, it may be necessary to delete the %s database. 5 11 9 2335:name 11 17 51954:my hostname 11 11 89897:NSRLA 12 25 net-client.emrsn.org 11 11 89897:NSRLA
6919 1487648790 5 1 2 2726954752 60673 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd SYSTEM critical 52 Unable to register %ld version %ld on tcp. Aborting. 2 2 6 390436 2 1 1
90307 1487648790 5 5 0 2653454400 60673 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd NSR critical 43 Unable to start the authentication service. 0
6919 1487649419 5 1 2 2456004352 63410 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd SYSTEM critical 52 Unable to register %ld version %ld on                                                        tcp. Aborting. 2 2 6 390436 2 1 1
90307 1487649419 5 5 0 2632775456 63410 0 net-client.emrsn.org nsrexecd NSR critical 43 Unable to start the authentication serv                                                       ice. 0



After some investigation, I came up with the following steps that finally resolved all the above mentioned errors:

Step1: Recreate the /nsr folder.

[root@net-client ~]# ls -ld /nsr
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 Feb 21 03:46 /nsr
[root@net-client ~]# mv /nsr /nsr.bkp
[root@net-client ~]# mkdir /nsr
[root@net-client ~]# ls -ld /nsr
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 21 04:51 /nsr
[root@net-client ~]#


Step 2: Make sure /etc/hosts file entries are correct.

The /etc/hosts file on the problematic server had the loopback entry missing because of which the service was unable to start. I added the entry "127.0.0.1 localhost" and was able to start the service successfully.


[ssuri@net-client:/etc/init.d] $ sudo bash -x /etc/init.d/networker start
+ NSRRC=/nsr/nsrrc
+ NSR_ENVEXEC=/opt/nsr/admin/nsr_envexec
+ NETWORKERRC=/opt/nsr/admin/networkerrc
+ case $1 in
+ echo 'starting NetWorker daemons:'
+ '[' -f /usr/sbin/nsrexecd ']'
+ '[' -f /usr/sbin/NetWorker.clustersvr ']'
+ /opt/nsr/admin/nsr_envexec -u /nsr/nsrrc -s /opt/nsr/admin/networkerrc /usr/sbin/nsrexecd
+ /usr/bin/tee /dev/console
+ echo ' nsrexecd'
+ '[' -f /usr/sbin/lgtolmd ']'
+ '[' -f /usr/sbin/nsrd -a '!' -f /usr/sbin/NetWorker.clustersvr ']'
+ '[' -d /var/lock/subsys ']'
+ touch /var/lock/subsys/networker
[ssuri@net-client:/etc/init.d] $ ps -ef | grep -i nsr
root     65329     1  0 04:59 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/nsrexecd


I'm sure that a lot more diagnostics can be done from the backup server side but since this was clearly a client side misconfiguration, a deep investigation wasn't needed.