2691105 - Diagnostics Agent can't connect to Solution Manager, remains in 'starting' status / loop - SAP Solution Manager 7.2

• The Diagnostics Agents are not able to connect to the Solution Manager, they appear in the Agent Administration screen, but with status "Starting".

• In the SMDSystem*.log, the following error is logged:

Sep 6, 2018 1:04:18 AM [Thread[Connector,5,main] ] Error [ms://<Solution Manager host>.<FQDN>.com:<Java SCS port>/P4] Ping failed (java.lang.NullPointerException) java.lang.NullPointerException: while trying to invoke the method java.lang.String.split(java.lang.String) of a null object loaded from local variable 'agentLookupname'
[EXCEPTION]
java.lang.NullPointerException: while trying to invoke the method java.lang.String.split(java.lang.String) of a null object loaded from local variable 'agentLookupname'
at com.sap.smd.SMDServerHandle.lightweightPing(SMDServerHandle.java:980)
at com.sap.smd.SMDServerHandle.ping(SMDServerHandle.java:850)
at com.sap.smd.SMDServerHandlep4_Skel.dispatch(SMDServerHandlep4_Skel.java:166)
at com.sap.engine.services.rmi_p4.DispatchImpl._runInternal(DispatchImpl.java:483)
at com.sap.engine.services.rmi_p4.server.ServerDispatchImpl.run(ServerDispatchImpl.java:83)
at com.sap.engine.services.rmi_p4.P4Message.process(P4Message.java:72)
at com.sap.engine.services.rmi_p4.P4Message.execute(P4Message.java:43)
at com.sap.engine.services.cross.fca.FCAConnectorImpl.executeRequest(FCAConnectorImpl.java:1055)
at com.sap.engine.services.rmi_p4.P4Message.process(P4Message.java:59)
at com.sap.engine.services.cross.fca.MessageReader.run(MessageReader.java:55)
at com.sap.engine.core.thread.execution.Executable.run(Executable.java:122)
at com.sap.engine.core.thread.execution.Executable.run(Executable.java:101)
at com.sap.engine.core.thread.execution.CentralExecutor$SingleThread.run(CentralExecutor.java:328)

• SAP Solution Manager 7.2

KBA , yellow , SV-SMG-INS-AGT , Installation of Solution Manager Diagnostics Agent , SV-SMG-DIA-SRV-AGT , Agent Framework , Problem