Perhaps the CTL_ACCESS is all that is needed but I don't think setting more will have a negative affect - you can try one at a time in an effort to see which one helps you situation. Found emc21558 as well, to see if you need to clear any semaphores too. Going to guess you had validated the variables with symcli -def and running this establish from the same window. Hope this helps...
I have several scripts that kick off every night at the same time. They are all doing a "symmir est -g -rdf -nop". I am getting the error "The SYMAPI database file is already locked by another process". Per primus emc45811 it sounds like I should be able to set the variables below in my script to resolve this issue but I am still receiving the error. Thoughts?  SYMCLI_WAIT_ON_GK=1SYMCLI_WAIT_ON_DB=1SYMCLI_CTL_ACCESS=PARALLEL  export SYMCLI_WAIT_ON_GKexport SYMCLI_WAIT_ON_DB export SYMCLI_CTL_ACCESS
The SYMAPI database file is already locked by another process