"Already know you that which you need..." Yoda. Very true if you have read the Part 1 of my series of 5 on Upgrading to GroupWise 8. If you recall, part 1 covered the upgrade process (which I have repeated here) as well as Installing ConsoleOne, Installing GroupWise 8 Snapins, Schema Extension for GroupWise 8 and building a Software Distribution Directory (SDD). In part 2, I will walk you through upgrading your Primary domain and Secondary domains.

Upgrade Process

Here is the Best Practice process for upgrading GroupWise, in general. Here is my process outline for upgrading. Note those items in Bold are what is covered in this article.

1. Install new ConsoleOne 1.3.6H

• Install the GroupWise 8 Snapins into ConsoleOne 1.3.6H

• Update eDirectory Schema.

• Create a new GroupWise 8 SDD

• Upgrade the Primary Domain

• Upgrade the Post Office(s) Secondary Domain(s)

• Upgrade the Post Office(s)

• Upgrade the WebAccess Gateways Domain(s), if you have them.

• Upgrade the WebAccess Gateway (s) -Agent and Application (Webserver)

• Upgrade the GWIA Gateway Domain(s), if you have them.

• Upgrade the GWIA Gateway(s)

• Upgrade the GroupWise Client

Upgrade the Primary Domain

We made it to upgrading a domain and its MTA! The Primary domain is your GroupWise system, without a Primary domain, your GroupWise system is unmanageable. Saying that, I am sure Novell has some tools that can help you use a restored older version of your Primary Domain and use it. That is why it's Best Practice to have at least 2 domains in any GroupWise environment.

There are a few things I like to do before you upgrade. One is to backup important files and the second is to run a bit of maintenance on the domain.

The first in ConsoleOne do the following:

Domain|{Right Click}| GroupWise Utilities| System Maintenance| Recover Database

This can also be run from the MTA screen:

F10| Admin Status| Perform DB Recover| Now?| Enter

This will give you a nice clean wpdomain.db. This process should be run for every domain you upgrade, just before you upgrade.

The following files should be backed up, or make a copy of them. Before you do, however, make sure the Primary domain MTA is unloaded and that there is NO FILE LOCK on the wpdomain.db. Test your exclusive access by renaming the wpdomain.db to wpdomain.db- -if you get a file lock message then make sure the MTA is unloaded and ConsoleOne is closed.

The files to back up:

• DomainDirectory/wpdomain.db

• DomainDirectory/wpdomain.dc

• DomainDirectory/wphost.dc

• DomainDirectory/gwdom.dc

• DomainDirectory/gwpo.dc

• DomainDirectory/wpoffice/ngwguard.dc

With a clean copy and backed up files it's time to upgrade. As always, there are two ways to upgrade a domain, using the Installation Wizard or manually. I prefer manually but will present both methods. First, the wizard.

Here is the process to upgrade the Primary Domain:

1. Run: GroupWise Software| Setup.exe

• Select: Install GroupWise System

• Select: Yes, on the License

• Select: Standard for the installation and Next

• Select: Update an Existing System and Next

• Select: NetWare (unless you want to run it on Windows, but I am only covering NetWare), and Next

• DE-Select: Install Administration Files. Unfortunately, you cannot de-select "Copy Files to Software Distribution Directory". You will be stuck running this.

• Select: Next

• Choose: A path for the SDD. This has to be a network drive. Next

• Choose: GroupWise Components to Install. If you choose none of them

• Select: Next

• Choose: A path for the Agent NLM files to be installed. I like to create a directory like: GW8 which tells me exactly what version I am running. Example: sys:\system\GW8

• De-Select: Uncheck all boxes in the Options area. You may want to load agents in Protected Memory or have the agents launch on startup of the server, or configure the agent for clustering. If so, do check these boxes, otherwise leave them uncheck. You can always set these options later.

• Select: Next.

• Add: The Primary Domain to the Domains/Post Offices list

• Select: Next

• Choose: Primary Domain directory on the System Update screen and Next

• Read: Summary. Here you have a chance to change settings if you'd like.

• Select: Install. This will start the installation of the SDD, the Agent files (NLM's), create an MTA configuration file and update the appropriate files in the domain directory.

• Select: Finish

Ok now you can go and load the agent MTA for the Primary domain. In the NetWare world the load would be something like: load sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @domain.mta. Here I assume you installed the agents to a "GW8" directory and let the Installation file create an MTA configuration file for you. You may also use the "grpwise.ncf" file the Installation creates.

Once the MTA loads a process is started that will pull all the new GroupWise 8 information into the wpdomain.db. This can be seen by using the F10| Admin Status| screen and looking to the "Recovering" statement. Or, if you missed it you will see a "Recovery Count" of 1. Next, to verify you have a GroupWise 8 Primary domain, launch ConsoleOne, connect to the Primary domain, select "Properties", you will see "8" for version.

Here are couple of the installation screens:

Click to view.

Figure 1: Upgrade Primary Domain: Update an Existing System

Click to view.

Figure 2: Upgrade Primary Domain: Summary of Primary Upgrade, Changing Options

Click to view.

Figure 3: Upgrade Primary Domain: F10| Admin Status| Recovery Count

And now you are done upgrading the Primary domain using the Installation program. Now, how can we do the upgrade manually? Let me show you.

Here is the manual process:

1. Backup: Make sure you have a backup of the old *.DC files before you start this method.

• Copy: All *.DC files from SDD\Domain directory to the Primary domain directory and overwrite. The files are: GWDOM.DC, GWPO.DC, WPDOMAIN.DC, WPHOST.DC

• Copy: NGWGUARD.DC from the SDD\PO directory to the Primary domain WPOFFICE directory and overwrite.

• Copy: All files and directories from SDD\Agents\NLM to your 'load' directory such as sys:\system\gw8. This is the location where the MTA agent for the Primary domain will load from and where its configuration file will be located.

• Copy: STRTUPEN.MTA from SDD\Agents\Startups\Language to your 'load' directory such as sys:\system\gw8.

• Rename: STRTUPEN.MTA to an 8 character name for your domain such as PRIMARY.MTA. Keep the *.MTA extension.

• Configure: The *.MTA file with all your custom parameters that you used in your old *.MTA file.

• Create: A load file. This is a file that will load the Primary domains MTA for you. GRPWISE.NCF is the system default. You can create this file in your 'load' directory using a text editor. I like to use a name like: GWUP.NCF to load my agents. And I use GWDN.NCF to unload agents. In this file if you are NOT using Protected Memory for GroupWise Agents, you will type the following:
  
  

  load sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @primary.mta

  
  
  

  Of course, this assumes you are loading from sys:\system\gw8. If you are not, then use your 'load' directory where the GWMTA.NLM file is located.

  
  
  

  Now if you are going to use Protected Memory for your GroupWise Agents, you will type the following for NetWare 6.5 sp4 to sp6, and sp8:

  
  
  

  load restart address space=primary sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @primary.mta
  
  

  
  
  

  This assumes you call your address space primary and assumes the 'load' directory on sys:\system.

  
  
  

  If you are using NetWare 6.5 sp7 then your lines will be:

  
  
  

  load address space=primary sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @primary.mta
  protection restart primary
  
  

  
  
  

  The reason for the difference is in the syntax that was left out in NetWare 6.5 sp7.

  
  
  

  Finally if you load in Protected Memory, then you need to make sure to ONLY unload the MTA agent using the following command:

  
  
  

  unload address space=primary

  
  
  

• Load: Run your *.NCF file from the NetWare System Console like this:
  
  

  sys:\system\gw8\GRPWISE.NCF

  
  
  

• Verify: On the MTA Agent screen F10| Admin Status| Recovery Count. You will see "Recovering" or see the Recovery Count increase by 1.
  

• Verify: In ConsoleOne look to the properties of the domain for version "8".
  
  
  
  Note: If after about 5-10 minutes you do not see the recovery count increase, start the recovery manually, as stated above. Then you will need to exit and enter the Admin Status to see the change. If you verify in ConsoleOne and the version still has not changed to 8. You may need to back out and start the upgrade over again. This is why we did a backup of all the files before we started. DO NOT DO A BACKOUT IF THERE HAVE BEEN CHANGES TO YOUR GROUPWISE SYSTEM, OR MORE THAN 1 HOUR HAS PAST. If a new change like adding a user is done, and then you revert back to an old wpdomain.db -that user account may well be lost.
  
  
  
  

Ok all that remains is to add the GRPWISE.NCF to the AUTOEXEC.NCF for auto start up of the MTA Agent.

Changes to the Domain

If you look at the screen shot below you will see on the left side my old GroupWise 7sp3 HP1 domain directory. On the right side of the screen shot is my new upgraded GroupWise 8 domain directory. First, do not get freaked about the dates. Remember GroupWise 8 was in 'lock down' for quite some time. What matters is that I used the correctly dated GroupWise 8 DC files from the SDD. Also, you will notice 2 new files: rl.dbg and pb.dbg. To quote a Novell source:

"These are debug files that created by the Validate process in ConsoleOne. The rl.dbg file will list any invalid or orphaned Client Option records that were removed by Validate. The pb.dbg file will list any invalid or orphaned Group Membership records that were removed by Validate."

Just make note of them.

Also, the GroupWise 8 MTA does have a SOAP port. It will be used for Administration in future releases of GroupWise. No need to worry about it at this time. It's not activated. It cannot be configured in either the MTA configuration file or in ConsoleOne. And it will not create a port conflict if you are using multiple MTA's on the same IP Address and same server. So says my Novell source.

Click to view.

Figure 4: Compare Primary BEFORE (Left Side) to Primary AFTER (Right Side) Upgrade

Secondary Domains

Ok you have the Primary domain and its MTA upgraded and running. Now it's time to turn your attention to upgrading your Secondary domains. I hope you have at least 1 Secondary domain, as it's Best Practice to have at least 2 domains in your environment for fault tolerance and recovery. Ideally, your Secondary domain(s) will hold either post offices or gateways and hopefully not both, again for fault tolerance/recovery reasons. In my case, I will assume my Secondary domain (GateDom) holds my gateways and my Primary holds my post office. My system is just a test system not a production system so do not take my design as what is best for your email system. I have several articles on GroupWise design. Please review them.

The best and easiest way to upgrade your secondary domains is to follow the manual process that I showed under the Primary domain upgrade.

Here is the manual process again for Secondary Domains:

1. Backup: Make sure you have a backup of the old *.DC files before you start this method.

• Copy: All *.DC files from SDD\Domain directory to the Secondary domain directory and overwrite. The files are: GWDOM.DC, GWPO.DC, WPDOMAIN.DC, WPHOST.DC

• Copy: NGWGUARD.DC from the SDD\PO directory to the Secondary domain WPOFFICE directory and overwrite.

• Copy: All files and directories from SDD\Agents\NLM to your 'load' directory such as sys:\system\gw8. This is the location where the MTA agent for the Secondary domain will load from and where its configuration file will be located.

• Copy: STRTUPEN.MTA from SDD\Agents\Startups\Language to your 'load' directory such as sys:\system\gw8.

• Rename: STRTUPEN.MTA to an 8 character name for your domain such as GATEDOM.MTA. Keep the *.MTA extension. Remember, GroupWise on NetWare MUST BE 8.3 format for directories and files. Besides, the shorter the better for typing.

• Configure: The *.MTA file with all your customer parameters that you used in your old *.MTA file.

• Add: A load line to your load file.. This is a file that will load the Secondary domains MTA for you. GRPWISE.NCF is the system default. You can use this same file, if both the Primary and Secondary are on the same server. If not, you can create a new GRPWISE.NCF on your Secondary domains server using a text editor as we did for the Primary. Make sure you create this 'load' file in the sys:\system\gw8 directory. As stated previously, I like to use a name like: GWUP.NCF to load my agents, GWDN.NCF to unload agents. In this file if you are NOT using Protected Memory for GroupWise Agents, you will type the following:
  
  
  

  load sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @gatedom.mta

  
  

• Of course, this assumes you are loading from sys:\system\gw8. If you are not, then use your 'load' directory where the GWMTA.NLM file is located.
  

• Now if you are going to use Protected Memory for your GroupWise Agents, you will type the following for NetWare 6.5 sp4 to sp6, and sp8:
  
  

  load restart address space=primary sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @gatedom.mta
  
  

  
  

• This assumes you call your address space primary and assumes the 'load' directory on sys:\system.
  

• If you are using NetWare 6.5 sp7 then your lines will be:
  
  

  load address space=primary sys:\system\gw8\gwmta @gatedom.mta
  protection restart primary
  
  

  
  

• The reason for the difference is in the syntax that was left out in NetWare 6.5 sp7.
  

• Finally if you load in Protected Memory, then you need to make sure to ONLY unload the MTA agent using the following command:
  
  

  unload address space=gatedom

  
  

• Load: Run your *.NCF file from the NetWare System Console like this:
  
  

  sys:\system\gw8\GRPWISE.NCF

  
  

• Verify: On the MTA Agent screen F10| Admin Status| Recovery Count. You will see "Recovering" or see the Recovery Count increase by 1.

• Verify: In ConsoleOne look to the properties of the domain for version 8.
  

Summary

Whew! I don't know about you but that was a lot of information. Now you are an expert in upgrading domains. As you can see, it's not too difficult and with good planning and process, the upgrade flows well. In the next article, I will show you how to upgrade a post office to GroupWise 8. In the meantime, "Mind what you have learned. Save you it can!"

Got comments or article ideas? Need help with GroupWise? Drop me a line at: Gregg@HinchmanConsulting.com . "The Force is strong in this one."