Changing Permissions: Error in Documentum CS 6.5 Fundamentals

I discovered another erroneous statement in Documentum Content Server 6.5 Fundamentals. This one relates to changing permissions on an object and occurs on Page 189. The statement in question is highlighted below.

Erroneous statement on Page 189 of CS Fundamentals

It states that at least WRITE permission is required to replace the ACL assigned to an object.

The fact is that the ACL cannot be replaced without Change Permission extended permission. Further, BROWSE is sufficient among basic permissions and WRITE is not needed for this purpose. We cannot do much to an object without BROWSE permission so that’s the minimum needed. Of course, basic permissions higher than BROWSE (i.e. READ, RELATE, VERSION, WRITE, DELETE) will also work because they imply BROWSE permission.

It is pretty easy to verify with Webtop. Make sure that the effective permissions – labeled as Your Permissions, on the Permissions properties tab indicate BROWSE and Change Permission and you will be able to select a different ACL and save the object.

Therefore the correct statement should be: Replacing the ACL assigned to an object requires BROWSE permission and Change Permission extended permission on the object.

Documentum Installation Owner and Windows Services

Documentum installation owner user id is used for installing Documentum Content Server. On Windows, the installation sets up services for each repository (docbase), connection broker (docbroker), and Java method server. If you run into issues related to the installation owner id (typically authentication related), there are two aspects that can be checked:

1. Each repository service has an associated command-line which specifies the installation owner as an argument. This command-line is visible on service properties when inspected through Windows services. You can edit the command-line through Documentum Server Manager utility. Select the relevant repository and click on the Edit Service button.
   1. Note that this argument overrides the install owner specified in server.ini in case there is a conflict between the two.
2. All the windows services use logon credentials and the Documentum services mentioned above use the installation owner credentials. These can be edited through the standard Windows service properties dialog.

Inspecting Documentum Repository Service

Issues related to the installation owner may arise when it is a domain user (as opposed to a local user) and/or when multiple content servers are being used. Another aspect to remember is that while Windows treats the user id as case-insensitive Documentum treats it as case-sensitive. Repository configuration also creates a user in the repository for the installation owner, using the exact case as entered during the installation process (at login time prior to installation).

NullPointerException during D6 Content Server Installation

While installing D6 Content Server on Linux I got a NullPointerException right at the point when it would try to install Weblogic for the Java Method Server. I was unable to locate any helpful information from the logs.

Then I found a thread on Powerlink Support Forums, entitled “Error Installing D6 Content Server”. While it didn’t give a direct solution, one of the posts indicated that it is probably a permissions issue. I did a quick check and sure enough /opt/dctm has owned by root while the install owner was dmadmin. Changing ownership of the installation path to dmadmin fixed the problem.