Policy Server Guides › Policy Server Administration Guide › Starting and Stopping the Policy Server

Starting and Stopping the Policy Server

This section contains the following topics:

Start and Stop Policy Server Services on Windows Systems

Start and Stop Policy Server Processes on UNIX Systems

Thread Exit Window during Policy Server Shutdown

Services and Processes Overview

The Policy Server runs two services under Windows and two processes on UNIX. The Policy Server installation process starts the Policy Server and Monitor processes and configures executive applications to run the processes automatically at system startup in the future.

The main Policy Server processes for Windows are:

Policy Server: Serves Agent requests for authentication, authorization, accounting and logging, and (if enabled) administration.
SiteMinder Health Monitor Service: The OneView Monitor, which monitors the health and performance of the authentication server, authorization server, and Web Agent.

The main Policy Server processes for UNIX are:

smpolicysrv: Serves Agent requests for authentication, authorization, accounting and logging, and (if enabled) administration.
smmon: The OneView Monitor, which monitors the health and performance of the authentication server, authorization server, and Web Agent.

Start and Stop Policy Server Services on Windows Systems

To start or stop Policy Server services on Windows systems:

On the Management Console Status tab, click the Start or Stop button.
Use the Windows Services dialog, which you can access from the Windows Start Menu using Settings, Control Panel, Services. When you start or stop a Policy Server process, the associated executive starts or stops.
You can stop the policy server from the command line using smpolicysrv:
```
installation_path\siteminder\bin\smpolicysrv -stop
```

Note: On Windows systems, do not run the smpolicysrv command from a remote desktop or Terminal Services window. The smpolicysrv command depends on inter-process communications that do not work if you run the smpolicysrv process from a remote desktop or Terminal Services window.

Important! Before running a SiteMinder utility or executable on Windows Server 2008, open the command line window with administrator permissions. Open the command line window this way, even if your account has administrator privileges.

Start and Stop Policy Server Processes on UNIX Systems

To start or stop Policy Server processes on UNIX systems, take either of these actions:

On the Management Console Status tab, click the corresponding Start and Stop button.
Use the supplied scripts. Two scripts are provided to start and stop the Policy Server processes. These scripts also stop the UNIX executive so that the processes do not restart automatically.
```
installation_path/siteminder/start-all
installation_path/siteminder/stop-all
```

In addition, the following script can be used to start and stop the Policy Server process. If the UNIX executive is not running when you execute the script, the executive starts along with the process. The script can be invoked with the same command line options, as follows:

installation_path/siteminder/smpolsrv

Command line options:

-stop: Stops a process.
-start: Starts a process.
-status: Indicates whether or not a process is running.

The Policy Server logs all UNIX executive activity in the installation_directory/log/smexec.log file. Log entries are always appended to the existing log file.

More Information:

Command Line Troubleshooting of the Policy Server

Thread Exit Window during Policy Server Shutdown

By default, the Policy Server waits 3 minutes for all threads to exit before shutting down. If any of the threads do not exit, the Policy Server exits.

You can change the maximum amount of time the Policy Server waits for threads to exit by creating a registry key.

To create the registry key

Access the Policy Server host system and do one of the following:
- (Windows) Open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Netegrity\SiteMinder\CurrentVersion\PolicyServer.
- (UNIX) Open the sm.registry file. The default location of this file is siteminder_home/registry.
  
  siteminder_home
  
  Specifies the Policy Server installation path.
Create MaxShutDownTime with a registry value type of REG_DWORD.
Unit of measurement: seconds

Default value: 180

Minimum value: 30

Maximum value: 1800
Do one of the following:
- (Windows) Exit the Registry Editor.
- (UNIX) Save the sm.registry file.
Restart the Policy Server.

Important! If the Policy Server threads do not exit properly during shutdown, contact SiteMinder Support.

Configure the Policy Server Executives

In both UNIX and Windows installations of the Policy Server, one or more executive applications monitor the status of Policy Server processes and automatically restart any processes that fail. The following sections describe how to start and stop Policy Server processes based on your platform and how to configure, disable, and enable the UNIX and Windows executives.

Configure Windows Executives

For Windows, each Policy Server process is monitored by a separate executive. Each of these executives reads the following threshold values from the Policy_Server_installation_ path\config\siteminder.conf configuration file:

SMEXEC_UPTIME_THRESHOLD: Indicates the minimum amount of time (in seconds) a Policy Server service must run after startup before the associated executive stops monitoring for frequent crashes. The default value for this parameter is 60 seconds.
SMEXEC_RESTART_THRESHOLD: Indicates the maximum number of times the executive attempts to restart a service in the time specified by the SMEXEC_UPTIME_THRESHOLD parameter. If a service crashes more than the number of attempts specified by this parameter, the executive stops attempting to restart the service. The default value for this parameter is five attempts.

To change the threshold parameters, edit the siteminder.conf file and restart the Policy Server processes.

Configure the UNIX Executive

For UNIX, the Policy Server and Health Monitor processes are monitored by a single executive. The executive reads its settings from the following configuration file:

installation_path/config/siteminder.conf

You can edit this file to change the following settings:

POLICYSERVER_ENABLED: Indicates the state of the Policy Server process when the executive starts running. Set this parameter to YES to enable the process at executive startup.
MONITOR_ENABLED: Indicates the state of the health monitor process when the executive starts running. Set this parameter to YES to enable the process at executive startup.
SMEXEC_UPTIME_THRESHOLD: Indicates the minimum amount of time (in seconds) a Policy Server service must run after startup before the associated executive stops monitoring for frequent crashes. The default value for this parameter is 60.
SMEXEC_RESTART_THRESHOLD: Indicates the maximum number of times the executive attempts to restart a service in the time specified by the SMEXEC_UPTIME_THRESHOLD parameter. If a service crashes more than the number of attempts specified by this parameter, the executive stops attempting to restart the service. The default value for this parameter is five attempts.

To change any of the UNIX Executive parameters

Edit the installation_path/config/siteminder.conf file.
From a command line, run the following script:
```
installation_path/siteminder/bin/stop-all
```
The Policy Server processes stop.
From a command line, run the following script:
```
installation_path/siteminder/bin/start-all
```
The UNIX executive restarts using the new settings in the siteminder.conf file.