Symptoms

After a user installs 2021 R3 OS Security Rollup on Avamar servers running 19.3 and above with SLES12SP5 OS, the Avamar UI displays kernel errors related to ConnectEMC start operation failure in the Events table. This occurs if email settings are not configured in the appliance. Avamar UI Events table displays ConnectEMC startup errors like the following: kernel: [86242.549021] traps: connectemc[15298] general protection ip:f762cae7 sp:ffdd6b54 error:0 in libstdc++.so.6.0.29

Cause

After a user upgrades to appliance version 2.7.2, the Avamar server nodes have SLES12 SP5 with the 2021 R3 OS Security Rollup are installed. Due to the updated OS binaries, ConnectEMC encounters a start issue if the /opt/connectemc/ConnectEMC_config.xml configuration file has any empty values or even blank spaces for the EmailSender and EmailServer parameters.For example, in the sample file below, the EmailSender and EmailServer are not configured with values, moreover it has a blank space. cat /opt/connectemc/ConnectEMC_config.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?> <ConnectEMCConfig SchemaVersion="1.1.0"> <ConnectConfig Type="Email"> <Retries>5</Retries> <Notification>Primary</Notification> <Timeout>300</Timeout> <Description>Avamar ConnectEMC Notification Email</Description> <BsafeEncrypt>yes</BsafeEncrypt> <IPProtocol>IPV4</IPProtocol> <EmailServer> </EmailServer> <EmailAddress>emailalert@emc.com</EmailAddress> <EmailSender> </EmailSender> <EmailFormat>ASCII</EmailFormat> <EmailSubject>Avamar ConnectEMC Notification Email</EmailSubject> <STARTTLS>no</STARTTLS> <IncludeCallHomeData>no</IncludeCallHomeData> It is observed that if email notification settings are not configured on the appliance, then the EmailServer and EmailSender fields in the ConnectEMC_config.xml configuration file on the Avamar server is configured with single blank spaces for both fields.

Resolution

Configure connectemc configuration by following the Avamar administration guide OR manually zero-out the ConnectEMC_config.xml configuration file (empty the configuration file) on the Avamar server. Configure email notification settings by following the Avamar administration guide Follow the detailed steps documented in Chapter named "Server Monitoring" under section "ConnectEMC". Steps to zero-out the configuration (empty the configuration file): If you do not want to configure email notifications, then you must manually zero-out the ConnectEMC_config.xml configuration file (empty the configuration file) on the Avamar server using the steps below: Connect to Avamar using SSH with an admin account.Switch to the root user account.Rename the current configuration file. mv /opt/connectemc/ConnectEMC_config.xml /opt/connectemc/ConnectEMC_config.xml.orig Create the configuration file without any values in it. touch /opt/connectemc/ConnectEMC_config.xml Verify that the configuration file is empty. ls -latr /opt/connectemc/ConnectEMC_config.xml -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 0 Feb 7 22:36 ConnectEMC_config.xml Restart the ConnectEMC service using the following commands: service connectemc stop service connectemc start

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