Using CRON and STUFFKEY to Prepare Servers for Upgrade
Novell Cool Solutions: Trench
By Jonathan Laudicina
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Posted: 9 Jul 2001 |
Version: NDS 8.5
To save time and make things easier, we've implemented CRON and STUFFKEY in a serious way to prepare for NW5 and NDS8.5. Without these two tools, we'd have to manually run health checks, DSREPAIR and DSTRACE actions on almost 400 servers - which would take A LOT of time. I wanted to share these automated stuffkey scripts with the Cool Solutions readers (with the usual disclaimers of use at your own risk).
They require STUFFKEY.NLM, TOOLBOX.NLM, DELAYCMD and work best when scheduled with CRON (I've included my CRONTAB file). I've included the older version of TOOLBOX.NLM that I used, in case you're not patched to the latest and greatest nw4 sp level on all servers. Place all of the .cfg and .cf files included here in SYS:SYSTEM.
- GET CRON here: http://support.novell.com/servlet/filedownload/pub/cron5.exe
- GET STUFFKEY here: http://support.novell.com/servlet/filedownload/pub/stufkey5.exe
- GET DELAYCMD here: http://www.netwarefiles.com/utils/delay.zip
- GET new TOOLBOX here: http://support.novell.com/servlet/filedownload/pub/tbox7.exe
I put a .cfg extension on each stuffkey script. The STUFFKEY readme explains how to call each script.
The scripts cover automating the following:
- Local DSREPAIR w/ option to rebuild operational schema
- DSREPAIR -a to check external references to find obits
- DSREPAIR -xk3 used to clean up some obits in extreme cases ****CAUTION in using this****
- DSREPAIR to verify remote server IDs
- DSREPAIR to repair server network addresses
Each script dumps a log file to SYS:SYSTEM\DSHEALTH\ after each process runs on the server.
The NCFs I've included cover some general DSTRACE commands, and a DSHEALTH.NCF that I used to call a combination of these scripts, and NCFs.
- DSTDEF.NCF : sets DSTRACE options back to default
- DSGOOD.NCF : healthy dstrace set commands
- DSHEALTH.NCF calls combination of scripts and NCFs
Lastly, I used the COLLECT.BAT batch file to then map and collect each log file from each server. CALL it from another batch file including your SERVERNAME, i.e, CALL COLLECT SERVER1
Download
Download ds-auto-health.zip
Only thing is, the scripts I used, when reverse engineered (as I'm sure they will be), might actually educate some of the other readers out there on the usefulness of stuffkey, AND on the individual operations of DSREPAIR.
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