The Okta Advanced Server Access (ASA) and Okta Privileged Access (OPA) ScaleFT Daemon (sftd) service fails to start on Red Hat instances when the /etc/redhat-release file is missing, empty, or configured as a directory. This prevents the service from reading the operating system (OS) platform. Resolve this issue by removing any invalid directory and creating a valid /etc/redhat-release file containing the OS name. The following error appears in the system logs:

Jul 22 17:32:14 AWS-RHEL8 sftd[5683]: time="2024-07-22T17:32:14Z" level=error msg="Error in mainLoop(), retrying" error="Validation Errors: \n/os/platform: too short, must be at least 1 characters\n (requestId=1-669e979e-69f466bc25b641aa4e0c16ca)" retry_in=14.758655832s

• Okta Identity Engine (OIE)
• Okta Classic Engine
• Advanced Server Access (ASA)
• Okta Privileged Access (OPA)
• ScaleFT Daemon (sftd)
• scaleft-server-tools

The sftd service requires the /etc/redhat-release file to read the OS platform. If the path points to a directory or an empty file, the OS platform returns as an empty string, which prevents the service from starting.

How is the invalid redhat-release file resolved?

Remove any existing empty directory at the specified file path, then generate a new file containing the correct OS information by executing the following commands.

1. Verify if the path is a directory by running the following command:

   cat /etc/redhat-release

2. Remove the empty directory if one exists:

   rmdir /etc/redhat-release

3. Create the /etc/redhat-release file and populate it with the OS information:

   hostnamectl | sed -n 's/  Operating System: //p' |sudo tee /etc/redhat-release

4. Confirm the resolution by checking the system logs for the absence of the previous error or by searching for the specific validation error:

   grep 'too short, must be at least 1' /var/log/messages