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/ccsoftware 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/filereporter/agent/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>

Or

DeployAgentsRPM.cmd <servernames.txt> <linux admin username> <rpm to deploy>

For an explanation on creating the servernames.txt file, see Section B.4, Creating the servernames.txt 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-2.0.2-x.i586.rpm

Or

DeployAgentsRPM.cmd servernames.txt root novell-filereporter-agent-2.0.2-x.i586.rpm