1- General |
| |
| 1-1. Q: | What
is SD? |
| A: | Software
Distributor (SD) is an HP-UX system tool for installing, removing,
and managing software. Designed and developed by HP, SD forms the basis
for
the Portable Operating System Interface Standard, POSIX 1387.2,
licensed by
several other Unix system vendors. HP introduced SD in HP-UX 10.00 and
has
enhanced and updated the product with each subsequent HP-UX release. SD
is
designed to run seamlessly in a networked environment. SD
is sometimes called SD-UX to distinguish it from SD-OV, which was
obsoleted in 2001. top |
| 1-2. Q: | What
is SD-OV? |
| A: | SD-OV refers to
the OpenView version of SD which became obsolete in
2001. OpenView consists of a suite of HP software products designed for
enterprise
management. SD-OV offered additional functionality beyond that of
SD-UX, particularly
the ability to manage software on remote systems and schedule SD
operations. The version of SD distributed with HP-UX
11i made available many of
the features of SD-OV without requiring an SD-OV license. You can
install
this version of SD on HP-UX 11.00 with the PHCO_25875 patch or later.
For
more information, see the Downloads
and Patches page. top |
| 1-3. Q: | What
is SD push? What are remote
operations? |
| A: | By default, SD
lets you pull software from a local or remote depot onto
your local system. With SD for HP-UX 11i, or the PHCO_25875 11.00
patch, you
can enable the ability to push software from a central management
server to
remote systems. For more information on these features, see the Software
Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i on the Information Library
page. top |
| 1-4. Q: | What
is the installed products
database (IPD)? |
| A: | The IPD is a
repository of information located under /var/adm/sw/products/
that describes all software that has been installed on the system. Do
not
try to edit these files. Use the swmodify
command
instead. For more information, see the swmodify(1M)
manpage, and the Software
Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i on the Information Library
page. top |
| 1-5. Q: | How
is the SD product organized? |
| A: | SD consists of
four major components: Packager, Controller, Daemon,
and Agent. All except the Agent are installed in the /usr/sbin/ directory. The Packager
consists
of the swpackage
command which takes a Product
Specification File (PSF), an optional set of Control Scripts, and the
files
that you want to deliver and packages them into an SD depot. The Controller
consists
of the SD commands used to manage packaged software: swcopy,
swinstall, swlist, swremove, swreg, and swverify.
A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is available for swcopy,
swinstall, swlist -i, and swremove.
(When remote operations are enabled, the sd
and swjob
-i commands also offer GUIs.) The Daemon
(/usr/sbin/swagentd)
coordinates controllers and agents, acting as an intermediary. When you
execute
a controller command such as swinstall,
a
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) contacts swagentd.
Then swagentd
forks, and the child process
issues an exec call
to run the agent, swagent. The Agent
(/usr/lbin/swagent)
performs the actual installation, removal, and management of software.
Agents
perform source and target activities. A source agent is a swagent process
that reads a software source such as a depot. A target agent operates
on a
target (a root file
system or a depot).
For
more information, see the sd(5)
manpage, and the Software
Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i on the Information Library
page. top |
2- Using
Software Distributor Commands |
| |
| 2-1. Q: | How
do I set SD ACLs? |
| A: | Refer to the SD
Administration Guide for your HP-UX release and Understanding
SD-UX ACLs on the Information Library page. top |
3- Troubleshooting
Software Distributor |
| |
| 3-1. Q: | SD
is behaving strangely; what
do I do? |
| A: | What appears to be
an SD bug often turns out to be a problem with networking,
the packaging of a depot, or the control scripts associated with a
piece of
software. Before you contact HP, be sure to attempt
the following and
gather useful information: Find
the HP-UX revision of your system by entering: uname
-a Find the version of SD installed by
entering: what /usr/sbin/swinstall
Verify
that SD is properly installed by entering: swverify
SW-\* Look at the contents of the log files
under /var/adm/sw/sw*.log.
It may be helpful to have the data for the entire session. In SD log
files,
sessions are delineated by lines beginning with =========. (If there is
too
much data in the log, locate the first sign of trouble and the next
several
error messages.) You may also want to have available
information from the swagent.log
files
stored in depots (for example, /var/spool/sw/swagent.log).
The swagent daemon
creates these when it
reads or writes from a depot containing information written by swagent.
Depots at other locations have a similar swagent.log.
top |
| 3-2. Q: | How
do I restore a corrupt depot? |
| A: | In short, remove
it completely and recreate it. First, determine why
the depot is corrupt. If it consistently causes
SD to die, or if swverify -d
reports unacceptable
errors, use swremove -d
to remove the depot,
then recreate the depot with swcopy
or swpackage.
If you still have a problem, the safest approach is use the this
command to
remove the entire depot: swremove
-d -i \* (Using the -i option invokes the interactive
user interface.
This lets you select the specific depot you want to delete and helps
prevent
you from accidentally deleting the wrong depot or the root file
system.) top |
| 3-3. Q: | How
can I tell if there is a networking
problem? |
| A: | SD errors caused
by underlying network problems may lead to errors that
are difficult to decipher. SD uses Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) to
communicate
between the controller and the agent processes. An agent is spawned by
swagentd
to perform the desired sw*
command (except
for swlist). The
agent process then sends
a response back to swagent(or
the controller).
If either the host and/or remote machine's networking files are not
configured
properly, RPC and thus SD, will fail. Always verify
the HOSTNAME and IP agree between /etc/hosts
and /etc/rc.config.d/netconf.
If the HOSTNAME and/or IP have changed, it is important to confirm
these changes
were made correctly. Incomplete changes will cause inconsistent
information,
so consider using the set_parms
command to
be safe. top |
| 3-4. Q: | Why
won't /usr/sbin/swagentd
start
the daemon and how does this relate to memory resources?
|
| A: | Kernel parameters
and available memory can influence the effectiveness
of a process such as swagent.
Swap space
is expected to be around 500MB for a server. One major SD customer
chose to
use these settings: The
default space allocated per process is 64 MB, although swagent may
surpass that level on remote operations. top |
| 3-5. Q: | What
else can I do to troubleshoot
SD? |
| A: | Make
sure that the agent is running by entering the command: ps
-ef | grep swagentd Pay close attention to ALL of the error
messages in the SD
log files. Often the first error messages, particularly those related
to RPC
(Remote Procedure Call) errors, tell you only that a problem has
occurred.
Subsequent error messages often contain critical information about
exactly
what happened, and why. In many cases, RPC errors indicate an
underlying network
problem rather than a real problem with SD. Review messages in the swagent.log and swagentd.log files,
as well as those in swinstall.log
or other SD controller
logs. For problems that occur in an SD agent process, the detailed
error messages
appear only in swagent.log
and swagentd.log.
(You can also view the swagent.log
using the log file
dialog in the SD GUI.) Check the version of SW-DIST (or SW-GETTOOLS)
installed on your system by entering:
ps -ef | grep swagentd
top |
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