UUIDD problem when running SAP NW ABAP inside Docker

UUID is a good old problem when it comes to running SAP NetWeaver on Linux / SuSE. You have a problem when you log in to your SAP system and get an error message. The error message shows the root cause and solution: “The UUID daemon (uuidd) is not active (code 59999). Check SAP note 1391070.”

Solution

SAP NetWeaver isn’t meant to run in Docker. When the software was designed, Docker or event containerization wasn’t around (maybe SUN). NetWeaver assumes that it is executed inside a real Linux. And the Docker version of OpenSuSE isn’t 100% a real Linux. A lot of services you get “automatically” when installing OpenSuSE are not available. One of those is that the init.d system is not starting services. Because of this, there is no UUID daemon running.

Make sure that the UUIDD service is running. For a normal Linux distribution, I blogged about this at a previous blog of mine. In case you are using Docker with OpenSuSE, make sure that uuidd is installed and executed during the image creation:

Installation

RUN zypper --non-interactive install --replacefiles  uuidd

Execution

RUN mkdir /run/uuidd && chown uuidd /var/run/uuidd && /usr/sbin/uuidd

Result

With the UUIDD running, the logon to SAP NetWEeaver ABAP is working. No restart of NetWeaver is needed.