B.5 Deploying the Linux RPMs

B.5.1 External Utilities

Deploying Linux agent RPMs from a Windows workstation requires some extra tools. The DeployAgents tool uses two external utilities from the PuTTY software family: plink.exe and pscp.exehttp://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html. Both utilities are distributed with permission and have not been modified. Seehttp://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.58/htmldoc/AppendixC.html#licence for more details.

B.5.2 Deployment Specifics

For RPM deployments, the DeployAgents tool performs the following actions.

  • Uses the RPM command line argument only as a guide to getting the proper component installed. The DeployAgents tool determines Novell Open Enterprise Server version and architecture, and installs the proper i586 or x86_64 RPM version from the software/sles10 or software/sles11 folder as required by the server.

  • Uses PowerShell to hide the password from plain text view, but does not encrypt the password in memory. It also uses a User-based environment variable, and cleans up the password as soon as it finished.

  • Uses PowerShell to parse the agent.dat or servernames.txt file. The agent.dat file is XML-based, and is converted to a plain text list of servers named servernames.txt. If an existing servernames.txt file exists, the parser looks for leading and trailing spaces, and makes a copy of the original file in servernames.txt.original.

  • Uses the /etc/SuSE-release and /etc/novell-release files from the server to get Novell Open Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server version information.

  • Creates a temporary directory in /tmp/software on the server as a local software repository, which is cleaned up at the end of the process.

  • Uses the component’s default installation paths and configuration paths. For example, the configuration directory would follow this pattern: /etc/opt/novell/${product}/${component}/config

  • Assumes that the root or provided administrative user account shares the same password across all servers in the servernames.txt file.

B.5.3 Using DeployAgentsRPM.cmd

Usage:

DeployAgentsRPM.cmd <agents.dat> <linux admin username> <rpm to deploy>

Explanation

The <agents.dat> is provided by the product whose agent or Event Monitor you are attempting to deploy. It can be found in the engine component data directory. Both the NSM Engine and NFR Engine provide this file.

The <linux admin username>, generally root, is needed to install software.

The <rpm to deploy> is just the RPM name without path information.

Example on a Single Command Line

DeployAgentsRPM.cmd agents.dat root novell-filereporter-agent-2.0.0-4.i586.rpm

Or

DeployAgentsRPM.cmd servernames.txt root novell-filereporter-agent-2.0.0-4.i586.rpm