SAPControl error. ASCS won’t start

It happened. SAP NetWeaver ABAP instance won’t start anymore. The DB gets up, but the CS simply won’t start. The log file startsap_ASCS01.log show a 401 error.

What happened? SAPstartsrv will start the instance and to do so, it needs to communicate with sapcontrol. To make this communication work a stream is going to be used. For make this work, sapcontrol uses a file located at /tmp. If now this file was deleted while sapcontrol was running, or the owner changed, sapcontrol will have problems in using these file to communicate. A solution to the problem can be found at SAP Note 1565645 – SAP composite note: sapcontrol and and SCN Wiki.

The basic solution is simple: Stop the service, delete any stream file in /tmp and the start the service again. Issue the following commands:

• sapcontrol -nr 01 -function StopService -user gwdadm <password>
  
• rm /tmp/.sapstream*
  
• sapcontrol -nr 01 -function StartService <SID>

This creates the sapstream files again:

Important: These files need to be owned by <sid>adm and have the super user bit set.

To see if these three simple commands solved the startup problem of ASCS, run startsap and check the output. In case everything is back to normal, the output will show that the instance is started without error.