Administration Guide

Group Services procedures

For the most part the Group Services subsystem runs itself without requiring administrator intervention. However, on occasion, you may need to check the status of the subsystem.

Displaying the status of the Group Services daemon

You can display the operational status of the Group Services daemon by issuing the lssrc command.

On the control workstation, enter:

lssrc -l -s hags.syspar_name

where syspar_name is the name of the system partition of interest.

On a node, enter:

lssrc -l -s hags

In response, the lssrc command writes the status information to standard output. The information includes:

• The information provided by the lssrc -s hags command (short form)
• The number of currently connected clients and their process IDs
• The status of the Group Services domain
• The node number on which the GS nameserver is running
• Statistics for client groups with providers or subscribers on this node.

Note that if the lssrc command times out, the Group Services daemon is probably unable to connect to the Topology Services subsystem. For more information, see Group Services initialization errors.

The following is sample output from the lssrc -l -s hags command on a node for the k21sp2 system partition:

Subsystem         Group            PID     Status
 hags             hags             11938   active
 4 locally-connected clients.  Their PIDs:
 21344 17000 18852 23486
 HA Group Services domain information:
 Domain established by node 9.
 Number of groups known locally: 3
                    Number of   Number of local
 Group name         providers   providers/subscribers
 cssMembership            5           1           0
 WomSchg_1                5           1           1
 ha_em_peers              7           1           0

Here is a sample of the output of the lssrc -l -s hags.k21sp2 command on the control workstation for the same domain:

Subsystem         Group            PID     Status
 hags.k21sp2      hags             24804   active
 1 locally-connected clients.  Their PIDs:
 44146
 HA Group Services domain information:
 Domain established by node 9.
 Number of groups known locally: 1
                    Number of   Number of local
 Group name         providers   providers/subscribers
 ha_em_peers              7           1           0

In this domain, the GS nameserver is on node 9 of the system partition.

If a GS nameserver has not yet been established, the status indicates that the domain is not established. Similarly, if the GS nameserver fails, the status shows that the domain is recovering. Both of these conditions should clear in a short time. If they do not and the Topology Services subsystem is active, call the IBM Support Center.

Using Group Services with DCE security

The Group Services subsystem, like Topology Services, is an SP trusted service that achieves security by authenticating the identity of message senders. Group Services shares the same security policy with Topology Services according to the SP security configuration established in the SP system partition.

The authentication methods enabled can be DCE, compatibility, both, or none. However, Group Services activates the authentication procedure only when DCE is the sole authentication method enabled and all nodes within the SP system partition are running PSSP 3.2. No authentication methods between nodes are activated if any node uses the compatibility method or is running an earlier level than PSSP 3.2.

Because Group Services shares the same security policy of Topology Services, the security principal rsct/hats and the associated key files are the same. Furthermore, any security changes made for Topology Services automatically effect Group Services as well. For related information, see Using Topology Services with DCE security.