Do I have to be logged on as a user with root authorization to start or stop SAP Host Agent?

It is not neccessary that you are logged on as a user with root authorization to start or stop SAP Host Agent. If you are logged on as user <sapsid>adm, you can control SAP Host Agent using the hostexecstart executable. However, it is not possible to stop SAP Host Agent without being logged on as a user with root authorization.

 

In general, hostexecstart can do the following:

 

usage: hostexecstart -[option]

 

[option]:
-start: start SAP Host Agent if not running.
-restart: stop SAP Host Agent if running, and restart it.
-status: return the status of SAP Host Agent (running/stopped)
-upgrade <path>: upgrade SAP Host Agent using the executable stored in the directory specified in <path>