sapcontrol: FAIL: HTTP error, HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized

Your SAP system won’t start because of below error,

Startup-Log is written to /home/sidadm/startsap_Dxx.log
/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/sapcontrol -prot NI_HTTP -nr xx -function Start
Start
FAIL: HTTP error, HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
startup of Instance failed

Solution

1. Go to /tmp directory and find the .sapstream5xx13 file. Make sure the permission/ownership is correct. If the issue is not related to permission/ownership, you can delete the .sapstream5xx13 (to be safe, backup first!).

srwx------  1 mq2adm   sapsys         0 2013-09-01 09:21 .sapstream5xx13

 mv .sapstream5xx13 .sapstream5xx13.BACKUP

2. Restart the sapcontrol service.

sapcontrol -prot NI_HTTP -nr xx -function Restart

3. You will see a new .sapstream5xx13 created in /tmp directory. Now, start your SAP system.

Reference

SAP Note 1565645