10.1 Server install completes, cannot open Manager ?

Question

I have installed and authorized ArcGIS Server 10.1, but when the Manager is supposed to pull up, I get a page not found error in the web browser on the local machine the install is located on. I cannot pull up the manager web page to save my life. Any ideas on what I could do to resolve this?

SusanMcclendon · Answer

smccle;247216 wrote:
Interesting when ESRI says:

"The ArcGIS Server account does not need to be in the Administrators group on any machine in your site."

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/install-guides/arcgis-server/10.1/index.html#/The_ArcGIS_Server_account/01nm0000000v000000/

Crickets???

I'm also getting a "WARNING: Could not connect to Log service. Writing log message to console. "  When the service starts up....still missing something in the permissions...

Susan

SusanMcclendon · Answer

The error was occurring because the domain account needed to be in the local admin group on the server we were installing it on. After that was done, the ArcGIS Server service started successfully.

Interesting when ESRI says:

"The ArcGIS Server account does not need to be in the Administrators group on any machine in your site."

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/install-guides/arcgis-server/10.1/index.html#/The_ArcGIS_Server_account/01nm0000000v000000/

I set up new server with ArcGIS 10.1 SP1 and used a previously set up domain account with permissions applied as laid out in the install documentation link above and did not add domain account to local administrators. After the install the Manager would not open with service and service_error logs reporting:

(If anyone is curious these logs are in the ArcGIS\Server\framework\etc\service\logs\)
Mon Nov 05 09:49:14 MST 2012:Starting RMID.
Access is denied
&
com.esri.arcgis.discovery.nodeagent.NodeAgentException: java.lang.Exception: Unable to start RMI registry on the specified port '1098'.

In the ServerConfigurationUtility.log file a check is performed on the account specified as the ArcGIS server account - "Checking if current user belongs to the local Administrators group".  After adding the domain account to local administrators and restarting server - success!

SO - ESRI - which is it?  Does the ArcGIS Server account need to be in local administrators group or not?  If not, why does the install perform the check? What other permissions does the account possibly need?

Note: we have certain group policy security parameters applied - so I'm always aware that can be a monkey wrench, but domain security policies do serve a purpose. I routinely turn off UAC and do some lock down on the drives when building servers - mainly removing USERS-READ from root of OS and Data drives and applying where needed lower down in the directory tree.  Could turning off UAC cause this issue?  Has anyone else had success running ArcGIS Server account in 10.1 without adding to local administrators group?  And if so, did you leave UAC on or do users have read permissions at root drive level?

This is kinda an important issue when documentation is so emphatic and yet the installer performs an explicit check to see if account is part of administrators group.

Cheers!

Susan

BrentStevener · Answer

The license file wasn't the root of the issue, even though it would have prevented us to start it up. The error was occurring because the domain account needed to be in the local admin group on the server we were installing it on. After that was done, the ArcGIS Server service started successfully.