The method you use to start the Universal Messaging realm server depends on the installation operating system.

For Windows operating systems, you can use the Start menu shortcut called Start Universal Messaging Realm Server.

For Linux/Solaris/Generic UNIX operating systems, starting the realm server can be done using the softlink inside the Server directory:

where <Software_AG_directory> is the product installation directory, and <InstanceName> is the name of the realm server instance. Note the use of the nohup command: if you issue these commands from a command window of a logged-on user, the realm server will continue to run even if the user logs off or the command window is terminated. Without the nohup command, the realm server will terminate when the command window is closed.

Alternatively, for all operating systems, you can start the realm server in a console window as follows:

You can run the realm server as a Windows service or UNIX daemon. The product installation procedure allows you to install the default realm server as a service/daemon. Additionally, you can use the nserverdaemon script that is located in the server/<InstanceName>/bin directory. This script offers various options, as follows:

Note: On Windows, the options for nserverdaemon are preceded by a double hyphen "--". On UNIX systems, the double hyphens should be omitted. Also on Windows, there is a script registerService.bat that has the same effect as nserverdaemon --install.

The nserverdaemon script offers several other options relating to the realm server that are not detailed here. You can see the list by using the command nserverdaemon --help.

For an alternative method of registering the realm server to run as a UNIX daemon, refer to Appendix A of the generic Software AG installation guide "Installing Software AG Products".

For information about managing your realm server via Software AG's generic administration tool "Command Central", refer to the Command Central documentation.

At this point the server should have started and is now ready for operation. To confirm this it is easy to check the realm server log file and ensure there are no errors being reported. Check the log file for a completion message such as the following:

As the realm server starts up it reports the current log level settings, currently set to 1000000 characters and a log level of 4. The log level was set during the installation, a level of 0 reports every action the server does and can roll log files every minute on a busy realm.

The realm server then reports the JRE environment and the currently installed security providers. These are important if running SSL and cause the majority of configuration problems. After this the server then reloads all the configuration parameters, channels and topics and then is ready to accept connections.

If there are any problems binding to a port or creating an SSL instance these exceptions are reported into the realm server log file with as much detail as the server can produce.

To test that the realm server is up and ready to accept connections, a simple test is to request information about the realm itself. You can do this as follows: