Problem:

When deploying a service to the local host using cobimtk the following error appears

"Fatal Error: MccListServiceProviders returned 12 (an external component failed)"

And mccerror.txt contains the following:

Sun 19 Nov 2006 12:29:50 PM PKT BindToDS: MLDAP error binding to provider: 0x51 SERVER_DOWN

Sun 19 Nov 2006 12:29:50 PM PKT MccDoListServiceProviders: no configured directories are available

Sun 19 Nov 2006 12:29:50 PM PKT MccListServiceProviders: DoListServiceProviders failed: (12) an external component failed

Resolution:

The errors in mccerror.txt mean that MLDAP couldn't connect to Micro Focus Directory Services (MFDS, running as mfds) and none of the configured directories are available. (By default, the only directory is MFDS at localhost:86.).

So the first thing to check is that mfds is running ok on the machine

   ps -ef | grep mfds

and that the Micro Focus Enterprise Server Administration pages can be opened for that machine from any web browser:

   http://machinename:86/

If mfds appears to be running ok, then netstat can be used to verify that mfds is listening on 86/udp as well, checking /etc/services to be sure that the mfcobol entry for 86/udp is present.

If mfds is not running on the machine, it can be started manually as root.

Finally, note that connecting via one of the machine's hostnames is not the same as connecting via "localhost", which is the default. localhost uses the loopback interface, and these problems can be as a consequence of it not been resolved correctly.

Check to see that "localhost" is correctly resolved by DNS, and that the loopback interface is up and working properly.

It's possible that MFDS is not listening on the loopback interface for some reason (eg it wasn't up when MFDS was started), or that loopback:86 is firewalled.

One easy way to test that the loopback interface is working ok is to try to view the MFDS home page (Enterprise Server Administration page) using localhost, either with a normal GUI browser if the local machine has got one or with a text-mode browser such as lynx or links, eg. lynx http://localhost:86