SAP AS ABAP Developer Edition: Steps to fix DBACOCKPIT and extending your DB space

UPDATE: The steps on extending the DB space would not work if you have installed AS ABAP 7.52 SP04. Please refer to https://blogs.sap.com/2019/12/22/resize-ase-database-in-npl-7.52-sp-04/ for the explanation why and the how-to for this release.

First of all, having SAP provide these Developer Edition ABAP servers for FREE is an absolute blessing! I’m sure the entire community is absolutely grateful and appreciate it – I know I am!

Here’s the link to download the ABAP servers and there are also links to guides on how to install found on the same page, if you don’t already know – https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#abap

Anyway, I did notice a couple of issues when I first installed these instances with DBACOCKPIT and would like to share some of the fixes that I’ve done to my local instance. I’ve had these fixes ‘documented’ for a while but didn’t have the time to publish them. But, here they are and I hope these will be useful to others too.

The steps below should be applicable to both the 750 SP02 and 751 SP02 versions.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a SAP Basis resource nor a SAP DBA, these steps below somehow worked for me and I certainly cannot guarantee that they will work for you too. Proceed at your own risk (especially the part about extending the DB)! I can not be held responsible if any of these steps below made your system unusable. If you agree, you may proceed.

 

Error when executing transaction DBACOCKPIT

ISSUE: If you run transaction DBACOCKPIT after installing the server, you might notice the error messages below. I believe that’s because the password for the user ‘sapsa’ was changed to the master password that we entered during installation and needs to be updated in the system.

SOLUTION: 

Step 1: Switch to the SAPGUI version of the DBACOCKPIT

Step 2: Navigate to System Landscape -> Database Connections -> Then drop-down on the folder SAP ASE and select the node +++SYBADM.

If you click on the “Test” button before changing your username and password, you might see this error message below.

So, go ahead and click on the button ‘Change User Credentials’ and enter the following:

Username: sapsa
Password: <your master password> ” The password you entered when prompted when installing the ABAP server

 

Step 3: Validate that the username + password now works by clicking on the ‘Test’ button

That’s it! Now, if you restart the DBACOCKPIT transaction again, you no longer get the error messages that you saw earlier.

Errors in DBACOCKPIT periodic jobs

Now, if you’ve fixed the issue above, you should now be able to go into DBACOCKPIT and explore around. Then, I noticed another issue…

ISSUE: Data Collector and other periodic jobs are getting some sort of authentication errors as well.

Go to the tab ‘Database NPL’, then click on the dropdown ‘Configuration’ -> DBA Cockpit Framework -> Data Collectors and Admin Procedures

Look at the ‘Errors’ column and select on one of the rows with Errors on it.

And I saw the error entries below…

SOLUTION: After some Googling around, looks like we just need to drop and recreate the extern login for SYB_JSTASK.

For this, go to the virtual machine and run XTERM and execute the following commands.

1. Switch over to user SYBNPL and enter your master password when prompted – su sybnpl
2. Then, login to the DB with isql – isql -SNPL -Usapsa -X
3. Enter password when prompted – <master password> 

Then, let’s validate to make sure that there is indeed a login for SYB_JSTASK set up in the system. To do this, execute the following commands

1. > use master
2. > go
3. > sp_helpexternlogin
4. > go

You should see a return of at least 1 row with the Server SYB_JSTASK and Login/Externlogin with sapsa. Now, let’s fix the issue by dropping the Externlogin and re-creating it again.

We execute sp_dropexternlogin to drop it.

1. > exec sp_dropexternlogin SYB_JSTASK, sapsa
2. > go

You should then see a message that says ‘Remote login/alias dropped.’

Finally, we execute sp_addexternlogin to recreate it again

1. > exec sp_addexternlogin SYB_JSTASK, sapsa, sapsa, ‘<master password>’
2. > go

And that’s it. If you have followed the steps above, you should get a similar screen as below.

And now, if you go back into DBACOCKPIT and monitor the logs of the periodic jobs again, you should now see success entries instead of the error logs. Refer to the green arrows below.

Success!

 

OPTIONAL: Add more space to database NPL by extending it

While browsing around DBACOCKPIT, I also noticed that the free space for database NPL is pretty limited. There’s about 3GB of free space left for the delivered AS ABAP 751 SP02 instance.

You can find the screen-shot above in DBACOCKPIT if you click to ‘Database NPL’ tab, then Performance -> Dashboard and look under Space Usage.

This step is completely optional. 3GB should really be sufficient for a lot of the POCs or test development that I want to perform but I wanted to see if I could extend / add more space to this database. If you do too, you can follow the steps below, but please make sure that your virtual machine has enough free space to be allocated to the database. I am going to extend the database by another 10GB of space.

You need to be in the virtual machine and also be running XTERM to execute the steps below:

1. Switch over to user SYBNPL and enter your master password when prompted – su sybnpl
2. Then, login to the DB with isql – isql -SNPL -Usapsa -X
3. Enter password when prompted – <master password>
4. > use master
5. > go
6. > disk init name = ‘NPL_data_002’, physname = ‘/sybase/NPL/sapdata_1/NPL_data_002.dat’, skip_alloc = true, size = ‘10240M’
7. > go
8. > alter database NPL on NPL_data_002 =’10240M’
9. > go 

Done! Now, let’s head back into DBACOCKPIT and see what we’ve done there.

Ahhh.. now that’s better!

That’s all folks! Good luck!