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Work Group Computing User`s and Administrator`s Guide

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1. Some hardware upgrades are not shipped with a software distribution but they require that you reinstall some software after the hardware upgrade is completed For example upgrades to a CPU board or the graphics subsystem require a software reinstallation In such cases the reinstallation is necessary because the hardware specific files that were installed for the original hardware are not appropriate for the new hardware When reinstalling software after a hardware upgrade be sure to follow the directions in Planning the Order of Installation to determine installation order Reinstallations require a miniroot installation When release notes accompany a product the product contains an additional man image that contains the release notes Some reference page subsystems contain reference pages for more than one software subsystem When you receive your workstation and install a software option for the first time be sure to check the status of reference page subsystems to verify that the reference pages that you want are installed Removing All Software To remove all installed software from the target system you must perform a miniroot installation you cannot remove all software during a live install since the miniroot is needed to supply the functions that sustain the system until critical software is replaced For specific instructions on removing software see IRIX Admin Software Installation and Licensing Troubleshooting Soft
2. 30 About Software Product Releases A software product release contains all software required to support a given version of a product and the tools that are needed to install the release One or more software product releases are contained in a distribution When you install a software product release files from previous versions of the release are automatically removed before the new files are installed the exception is configuration files which are saved if they contain local modifications If a product release includes hardware specific files the installation utility automatically determines the file version that is needed on a particular model and installs that version Product releases may have prerequisites that require a particular installation order They might also have compatibility requirements with other installed products Inst protects users against potential problems by preventing installation if there are any unresolved incompatibilities or prerequisites unless you override this safeguard Installation instructions including prerequisites and incompatibility information are provided in the product release notes which are always included as an installable subsystem of the product You can read product release notes from the distribution CD using the CDgrelnotes or CDrelnotes command Instructions for reading release notes are included in the CD jewel case insert Product Descriptions The product description is
3. at your site up to date Installing a Software Update When you receive a software update it might be delivered on multiple CDs Use the sequence numbers on the CD labels or the directions in Planning the Order of Installation on page 34 to determine the order in which you should install the updates Updates are not necessarily included for all products since not all products are updated at the same time When you install a software update replace or remove all of the older subsystems in each product that you install Do not remove just some of the older subsystems When a server or workstation contains software subsystems from different releases of a product compatibility problems result that can be very difficult to diagnose System Software Maintenance Installing Optional Software Products Software options are products that you may or may not choose to run on a system They are usually purchased separately from a computer system but may also be shipped as a complimentary offering with a new system or when a new version of a purchased option is released When you install a software option keep these points in mind e The release notes for a software option explain whether a miniroot installation is required e If the software option requires miniroot installation use the installation tools that accompanied the version of eoe that is already installed on your system e If you have several software options to install and
4. d3 respectively proj3 Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Figure 2 1 IRIX Filesystems You can join two or more disk partitions to create a logical volume The logical volume can be treated as if it were a single disk partition A filesystem can reside on a logical volume thus making it possible for a single filesystem to exist across more than one disk You might create a logical volume with a single filesystem if you need to deal with very large files or if you need to make it convenient to access a very large amount of storage space The following subsections describe key components of filesystems in more detail For even greater detail see IRIX Admin Disks and Filesystems About Filesystems Inodes Information about each file is stored in a structure called an inode The word inode is an abbreviation of the term index node An inode is a data structure that stores all information about a file except its name which is stored in the directory Each inode has an identifying inode number which is unique across the filesystem that includes the file An inode contains this information the type of the file see the next section Types of Files for more information the access mode of the file the mode defines the access permissions read write and execute and may also contain security labels and access control lists the number of hard links to the file who owns the file the owner s user ID number and the group to
5. e Does the device require any special security precautions 59 Chapter 6 Peripheral Devices 60 The information that follows deals with the overall tasks and considerations in setting up using and maintaining peripheral devices for a work group For detailed instructions about setting up a particular peripheral device see the documentation that came with it as well as IRIX Admin Peripheral Devices Printers Printers can be connected to individual workstations or to network print server systems A print server which is a printer connected to network print server system can be shared by multiple users each of which is a print client Work groups often use a print server available to all work group members It is generally useful to locate a print server centrally in a location accessible to everyone and convenient for the administrator who may be responsible for general maintenance and administrative tasks such as replacing toner cartridges and maintaining the print server Printers may have parallel serial or SCSI interfaces Any printer regardless of interface or other hardware characteristics can be a network print server Likewise any system on the network can be a network print server system it does not need to be a dedicated system In planning your printer deployment strategy the volume of print jobs you expect in your work group should play a role in choosing the system or systems you want to use as network pri
6. for the most part need to be concerned with issues in this area Work group computing brings a great deal of flexibility to the setup and distribution of application software In a work group environment the administrator can choose to tailor the work group software configuration to the particular needs and resources at hand The administrator has choices in two major areas where software applications are stored and where they are executed In the typical personal computing environment applications are stored on each individual machine While this configuration is also possible in work group computing the administrator can also choose to keep all application software on a server or to centralize some applications and distribute others The considerations in making decisions about where to store software include e the location of available storage space e the number of users of a particular application e the expected frequency of maintenance and updating of the applications e the economics of the applications needed by the work group Ina work group computing environment administrators can also configure the distribution of processes throughout the work group In contrast to a personal computing environment in which applications needed by a user must always execute on the user s machine applications in work group computing can be set up to execute on a server The considerations in making decisions about the distribution of processes i
7. menu you run a tool by choosing it from the menu The first tool in the menu is the System Manager Tools that you use less frequently appear when you choose System Admin Tools from the Tools menu in the System Manager window The System toolchest includes these tools e System Manager e Disk Manager e User Manager e NFS Mount Manager Using System Administration Tools e Printer Manager e Software Manager e Backup amp Restore e View System Log e Run Confidence Tests Each tool is described in a section below System Manager Using the System Manager a user can perform these tasks e Determine which of the system s resources are available for use by other systems on the network e Check the hardware and software inventory of the system e Get business card information about the system s primary user and administrator In addition a privileged user can perform these tasks e Runall the system administration tools e Designate the primary user Disk Manager The Disk Manager shows how much disk space you are using and how much is still available Privileged users can specify when the system should warn that the disk is nearly full When you install a new disk a privileged user also uses this tool to specify a directory from which to access the disk the directory from which you access a disk is called the mount point for that disk Chapter 1 About Work Group Computing User Manager The Us
8. name and password checking uncomment the line that starts DWEB_PASSWD_FILE in the configuration file usr lib Insight dweb data config dynaweb cfg tmpl and add the absolute pathname of the password information file as the value of DWEB_PASSWD_FILE 79 Chapter 8 Sharing Documentation Optionally make other changes to the configuration parameters Ordinarily you do not need to change the parameters manually in the configuration file Several values such as hostname and server port are defined during installation Most other values have defaults The configuration parameters and the format of the configuration file are detailed in the IRIS InSight DynaWeb Administrator s Guide Note Collections you add to DynaWeb and changes you make to the DynaWeb configuration parameters do not take effect until the server is restarted Troubleshooting DynaWeb 80 This section lists possible causes and solutions for some problems that you may encounter when administering a DynaWeb server Directories You cannot find a DynaWeb directory using the pathname specified in a DynaWeb guide A directory pathname without a leading slash indicates that the path is relative to the DynaWeb home root directory Clients are unexpectedly accessing directories outside of the DynaWeb root directory tree Make sure that symbolic links exist only where expected Web clients can navigate downward within any linked directory Moreover if a
9. use both concurrent and nodelocked licenses In addition an application itself can have both a nodelocked and concurrent license License Groups for Concurrent Licensing A license group is a set of systems that use a set of Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers A licensed application running on a system that is part of a license group requests licenses only from Network License Servers that belong to its license group Systems on a network can be divided into one or more license groups and systems on different segments of a multi segment network can belong to the same license group but each system can belong to only one license group Systems belonging to a license group get licenses only from Network License Servers in the license group and the Network License Servers in a license group do not give licenses to systems outside of the license group Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers in a license group don t respond to license requests from systems that are not in the license group Licensing Software Silicon Graphics products are licensed by either the NetLS or FLEXIm application FLEXIm the newer of the two is recommended The FLEXIm End User Manual and the Network License System Administration Guide are the primary sources of information on setting up and maintaining the licensing scheme at your site Nodelocked License Startup When an application with a nodelocked license starts up it first chec
10. Peripheral Devices If the tape drive is an external unit does it have power Simply powering it on does not cause it to be seen by the computer The system must be shut down power cycled then rebooted During the boot phase do you see the access light on the tape drive light up at all If it doesn t flash at all chances are the operating system is still not seeing the drive Is the SCSI cabling and termination correct If visual inspection shows nothing obvious try resetting the connectors Any movement of hardware or cabling must be done with the system powered off 65 Chapter 6 Peripheral Devices e Was the tape device s SCSI address changed when other SCSI devices were added to the system e Is the tape drive s read write head clean Follow the manufacturer s guidelines for maintenance and cleaning This covers the basic problems that administrators experience regarding missing tape drives See the following reference pages for more information on the commands used in this section mt ls hinv For more technical information about tapes see mtio tps or xmt reference pages Troubleshooting Tape Read Errors Often there is a quick and simple fix for an error message that is caused by a tape drive malfunction or the tape itself Both recoverable and unrecoverable errors can be caused by something as basic as a dirty read write head a poorly tensioned tape or a dropout which is a physically bad spot on the
11. after installing new software and when you are certain the software is working properly If your system is very active or if you are not the only administrator back up the root filesystem regularly Backup Strategies User Filesystems The usr filesystem which often contains both system programs such as in usr bin and user accounts is usually more active than a root filesystem Therefore you should back it up more frequently At a typical multiuser installation backing up once per day using an incremental scheme should be sufficient Treat the var filesystem similarly it contains data such as the contents of users mailboxes Incremental Backups Incremental backups can use fewer tapes to provide the same level of protection as repeatedly backing up the entire filesystem They are also faster than backing up every file on the system An incremental scheme for a particular filesystem looks something like this 1 On the first day back up the entire filesystem This is a monthly backup 2 On the second through seventh days back up only the files that changed from the previous day These are daily backups 3 On the eighth day back up all the files that changed the previous week This is a weekly backup 4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 for four weeks about one month After four weeks about a month start over repeating steps 1 through 4 You can recycle daily tapes every month or whenever you feel safe abou
12. color scheme to identify such aspects of the backup as what system it is from what level of backup complete versus partial what filesystem and so forth To minimize the impact of a disaster at your site such as a fire you may want to store main copies of backups in a different building from the actual workstations You have to balance this practice though with the need to have backups handy for recovering files If backups contain sensitive data take the appropriate security precautions such as placing them in a locked secure room Anyone can read a backup tape on a system that has the appropriate utilities How Long to Keep Backups You can keep backups as long as you think you need to In practice few sites keep system backup tapes longer than about a year before recycling the tape for new backups Usually data for specific purposes and projects is backed up at specific project milestones for example when a project is started or finished As site administrator you should consult with your users to determine how long to keep filesystem backups With magnetic tapes however there are certain physical limitations Tape gradually loses its flux magnetism over time After about two years tape can start to lose data For long term storage re copy magnetic tapes every year to year and a half to prevent data loss through deterioration When possible use checksum programs such as the sum utility to make sure data hasn t deter
13. in usr lib acct such as ckpacct and remove for ideas about how to build your own administration scripts Backup and Recovery No matter what kind of computing systems and environment you use it is essential to regularly back up files Backup copies are often the only way to recover files that have been accidentally erased or lost due to hardware problems It is the responsibility of the work group administrator to make sure there are backups of the files used in the work group Depending on the work group s backup plan it may be up to users or to the administrator to actually perform the backups as well as any recovery that might be needed 19 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 20 Types of Backup Media Some of the common types of backup media supported on Silicon Graphics systems include the following e 1 4 cartridge tape 4 track e 8mm cartridge e DAT e DLT In addition to backup devices attached to any particular system backup devices of various types and capacities may be accessible through network connections Refer to your owner s guide for information on locally accessible devices and the appropriate vendor documentation for network accessible device information Choosing a Backup Tool The IRIX system provides a variety of backup tools and you should use whichever ones work best for you If many users at your site are already familiar with one backup program you may wish to use that program consistent
14. make network administration more efficient by reducing the risk of error and the time required to perform redundant file management tasks For example maintaining the etc hosts database on a large network might require creating a script to automatically copy the etc hosts file from a central system to all systems on the network It also requires setting up the appropriate access permissions on each system to enable this file transfer this is a redundant and time consuming process By contrast on networks using NIS maintaining the etc hosts database requires modifying a single file typically etc hosts on a single system NIS can service networks with up to approximately 1000 systems Larger networks can be organized into multiple NIS service areas or domains 53 Chapter 5 Identifying Your Work Group 54 NIS Clients and Servers An NIS client is a process running on a system that requests data from an NIS database An NIS server is a process running on a system that provides data from the NIS database The terms client and server designate both processes and systems a system is considered a client when requesting NIS data and it is considered a server when providing NIS data A system can function as a client and a server simultaneously Sometimes client requests are handled by NIS servers running on the same system and sometimes they are serviced by NIS servers running on a different system If one NIS server system fails cl
15. manufacturing to identify the collection of errors that the patch corrects Typically the reported errors that result in a patch release occur only under certain operating conditions For this reason installing a patch is necessary only if a system or site is experiencing a problem that the patch addresses How Software Installation Works Most software installations can be performed without interrupting system operations Installations that are performed without shutting down the system are referred to as live installations Live installations are preferred because they are usually less time consuming and because other system operations can be sustained during the installation session Whenever software installation affects fundamental IRIX functions such as device management software must be installed by a miniroot installation which requires a system shutdown 31 Chapter 3 Installing and Setting Up Software Making Installable Software Available to the Work Group 32 The location of a software distribution is known as the distribution source the system receiving software during an installation is known as the target A distribution source may be a CD that is mounted on the target a CD that is mounted on a remote system or a centralized directory on the network to which the distribution has been copied The directory on a distribution CD that contains the software is always called dist You will often want to set up an i
16. system messages and lets a privileged user customize when and how users should be notified of system problems Run Confidence Tests Run Confidence Tests displays a window in which users can test various peripherals and system components such as the mouse keyboard and monitor Logging In as root Through a Shell Window Only the administrator can perform administrative tasks that are not supported by the graphical tools since these tasks require the use of the root account in a shell window The home directory for the root account is the root directory of the filesystem The user logged in to the root account can move change and delete every file and directory on the system regardless of who owns them and what type of permissions they have set Be sure to create a password for this account that only the administrator knows Note Some UNIX and IRIX documents refer to the user of the root account as the superuser rather than the administrator When you re already logged in as a regular user you can start a shell window and log in as root by following these steps 1 Choose Unix Shell from the Desktop toolchest 2 Position your cursor within the new window and enter o login root If a prompt for a password appears type the password then press Enter If a prompt appears but the root account has no password just press Enter See Customizing System Account Information to create change or remove a passwor
17. tape An EOT message can also mean that there is no data on the tape The commands below could help you with some basic tape maintenance and performance functions Using these commands could either prevent future errors from occurring or help you recover from an existing error condition e The hinv command determines which tape drive type is connected to your system e The mt status command verifies the status of the tape drive and the media e The mt retension command ensures that consistent tension is applied to the tape within the cartridge e The mt reset command resets the tape drive and controller Use this command only as a last resort in some instances it may result in loss of data In the case of SCSI tape drives mt reset resets all SCSI devices including disk drives 66 Chapter 7 Security Overview of System Security System security under IRIX is primarily dependent on system login accounts and passwords Proper administration user education and use of the facilities provided yield adequate security for most sites Most security breaches are the result of human error and improper use of the provided security features No extra measures yield more security if the basic features are not used or are compromised by user actions Also periodically log in with anonymous FTP to sgigate sgi com and look in the directory ftp security for any security patches for your system This chapter deals with maintaining securi
18. the encryption capabilities of text editors for example ed and vi provides some protection for sensitive information Security for Administrators Site administrators should be aware of the following Permissions for directories and files should be set to allow only the necessary access for owner group and others This minimizes the damage that one compromised account can cause There are several ways accounts and passwords protect the system By requiring users to log in with specific accounts you can determine who is responsible for specific actions on the system Using the IRIX system of file permissions users can keep data reasonably secure Other users on the system are less likely to view confidential material accidentally 73 Chapter 7 Security 74 Ifall accounts have passwords the chance of an unauthorized person accessing the system is greatly reduced However the possibility of unauthorized access increases if users are lax about changing their passwords regularly and choosing good passwords The section Passwords on page 68 describes how to choose good passwords All active accounts need passwords which should be changed regularly Do not use obvious passwords and do not store them online in plain text format If you must write them down on paper store them in a safe place Make sure that each user s home account and especially the shell startup files profile login and cshrc a
19. the following e 720 Kb 3 5 floppy e 1 44 Mb 3 5 floppy e 20 1 Mb floptical e 360 Kb 5 25 floppy e 720 Kb 5 25 floppyi e 1 2 Mb 5 25 floppy Silicon Graphics systems automatically determine the format of a floppy disk inserted in your drive and if it is a DOS or Macintosh floppy disk automatically mounts the filesystem on your default mount directory Once the filesystem is mounted you can use typical IRIX commands with it You can use a floptical or floppy disk drive like a tape drive for IRIX file transfer You can use the standard tape archive commands to write files to the floppy disk drive if it is in DOS format When you place files on a floppy disk it is a good idea to make a note on the disk label of the format or the exact command used to place the files on the floppy disk This makes it much easier for you and others to retrieve the files from the floppy disk Also whenever possible change directories to the one that contains the file and place the file on the floppy disk using a relative pathname rather than specifying the absolute pathname Also be aware that using a floppy disk to transfer files to systems made by other manufacturers may mean that the same tools are not available on the receiving system The tar cpio and dd tools are usually available on all UNIX systems Tape Drives This section covers what you need to know about the tape drives on your workstation or server The cartr
20. the network administrator is often responsible for these tasks Chapter 1 About Work Group Computing e Setting up and maintaining the network so connections are reliable and data is transferred as quickly as possible e Creating maintaining and periodically distributing a list of all systems and users so that each has a unique identity on the network e Setting up and maintaining network services such as electronic mail and the Network Information Services NIS Using System Administration Tools As the administrator or privileged user you can use two different types of tools e The System toolchest provides a collection of graphical system administration tools e The IRIX shell accepts IRIX commands that you use for more advanced administrative tasks This online information describes how to use the graphical tools in the System toolchest to perform as many administration tasks as possible in cases where no graphical tools support a task you must use IRIX commands or edit system files If you prefer to perform all administrative tasks without using the System toolchest see the IRIX Admin manual set choose Online Books from the System toolchest and look in the SGI_Admin bookshelf Regardless of whether you edit system files manually or let the graphical tools do it for you you are changing the same system files The System Toolchest The administrative tools that you ll use most frequently are in the System toolchest
21. they are on more than one CD or distribution directory use the CD sequence numbers release notes information or information in Planning the Order of Installation on page 34 to determine the installation order If the installation order is wrong you will see a message to that effect when you launch the installation Installing Patch Releases A patch release contains replacement files that can be installed to modify a particular software product Installing patches is optional review the online release notes that accompanied the patch to determine whether to install it or not Installing Software for Hardware Upgrades In some cases changes to software are required when you install a hardware upgrade on a system thatis already in service As a general rule adding memory bitplanes and disks requires no change to the software but other hardware upgrades require changes to the installed software The documentation that accompanies the upgrade explains whether a software installation is necessary for the upgrade Installing Accompanying Product Releases Some hardware upgrades are shipped with a software distribution in the form of a software product release Use the directions in Installing Optional Software Products to install this type of software distribution If the software distribution contains installation tools you must use them 37 Chapter 3 Installing and Setting Up Software Reinstalling the Same Software
22. uses a mnemonic device file name is this o mount dev usr usr See the mount reference page for more information about the mount command 17 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 18 Mounting Filesystems Automatically With the etc fstab File The etc fstab file contains information about every filesystem and swap partition that is to be mounted automatically when the system starts up In addition the etc fstab file is used by the mount command when only the device block file or the mount point is given to the mount command For details about adding entries to etc fstab and for information about the format of the etc fstab file see the manual IRIX Admin Disks and Filesystems Mounting a Remote Filesystem Automatically If you have the optional NFS software you can automatically mount any remote filesystem whenever it is accessed for example by changing directories to the filesystem with cd The remote filesystem must first be exported with the exportfs command For complete information about setting up automounting including all the available options see the automount and exportfs reference pages These commands are discussed more completely in the ONC3 NFS Administrator s Guide Unmounting Filesystems Filesystems are automatically unmounted when the system is shut down To manually unmount filesystems use the umount command There are three basic forms of the command as shown below You can use the first
23. which the file belongs the group ID number the size of the file in bytes the date and time the file was last accessed and last modified information for finding the file s data within the disk partition or logical volume the pathname of symbolic links when they fit and on XFS filesystems only You can use the Is command with various options to display the information stored in inodes For example the command Is l displays all but the last two items in the list above in the order listed the date shown is the last modified time Inodes do not contain the name of the file or its directory 13 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 14 Types of Files Filesystems can contain the file types listed in Table 2 1 You can see the type of a file in a shell window when you use the s command the first character in each line of output indicates the file s type Table 2 1 Filesystem File Types File Type Indicator Comments Regular files One dimensional arrays of bytes Directories d Containers for files and other directories Symbolic links 1 Files that contain the name of another file or a directory Character c Enable communication devices between hardware and IRIX data is accessed on a character by character basis Block Device b Enable communication between hardware and IRIX data is accessed in blocks from a system buffer cache Named pipe also Allow communication between two unrelated processes on known as FI
24. CP IP to communicate with each other and with systems running licensed applications 45 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group e If your network uses routers each network segment where licensed applications are run should have at least one Global Location Broker e You should strongly consider setting up two or more Network License Servers For example instead of obtaining a license that supports 15 concurrent users and installing it on one Network License Server obtain three licenses for five concurrent users each and install each license on a different Network License Server That way if a Network License Server becomes unavailable there are still two Network License Servers that can grant permission for ten concurrent users e Donot use diskless systems as Global Location Brokers or Network License Servers Setting Up Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers The overall steps in setting up a Global Location Broker and Network License Server are as follows e Make sure the license for your software software is intended for the system you want to set up or that the license can be used on any system e Make sure that the necessary software susbystems are installed e Set up and run the Network License Server and Global Location Broker For detailed instructions see the Network License System Administration Guide The Licensing Process 46 After your licensing scheme is established and your Global
25. FOs the same host They are created with the mknod command UNIX domain s Connections between processes that allow them to sockets communicate possibly over a network Hard Links and Symbolic Links As discussed in the section Inodes in this chapter information about each file except for the name and directory of the file is stored in an inode for the file The name of the file is stored in the file s directory and a link to the file is created by associating the filename with an inode number This type of link is called a hard link Although every file is a hard link the term is usually used only when two or more filenames are associated with the same inode number Because inode numbers are unique only within a filesystem hard links cannot be created across filesystem boundaries The second and later hard links to a file are created with the In command without the s option For example say the current directory contains a file called origfile To create a hard link called linkfile to the file origfile enter this command ln origfile linkfile About Filesystems The output of ls l for origfile and linkfile shows identical sizes and last modification times ls l origfile linkfile rw rw r 2 joyce user 4 Apr 5 11 15 origfile rw rw r 2 joyce user 4 Apr 5 11 15 linkfile Because origfile and linkfile are simply two names for the same file changes in the contents of the file are visible when using either fil
26. GI script or as a process e Create a hypertext link from your home page to the DynaWeb home page e Specify the URL of the DynaWeb home page or the DynaWeb collections page to your Web browser e Install the Silicon Graphics What s New product If you set up DynaWeb to run as a CGI script this method can be used to access books and collections e Specify the URL of the parent server to your Web browser DynaWeb Setup Process Following the initial setup of DynaWeb to run as a CGI script or as a process follow these steps to make IRIS InSight book collections accessible to your work group e Set up collections in standard locations IRIS InSight book collections in the standard locations usr share Insight library are automatically made available to the DynaWeb server when it starts up InSight book collections in nonstandard locations and collections of DynaText books can be made available as well e Optionally set up collections in non standard locations You can set up collections in non standard locations and collections of DynaText books in two ways by using symbolic links or by setting up a collection as a directory Using symbolic links makes book maintenance and DynaWeb upgrades simpler but introduce potential security risks particularly if the linked directory contains additional links e Optionally enable HTTP authentication When the DynaWeb server is installed authentication is inactive To enable user
27. Location Brokers and Network License Servers are set up you can proceed with the process of obtaining setting up and installing licenses Receiving and installing the first license for a software product can be slightly different from installing a replacement license as detailed in the following figures The Licensing Process Figure 4 1 Licensing Process for New Software part 1 47 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group Figure 4 2 Licensing Process for New Software part 2 48 The Licensing Process Figure 4 3 Licensing Process for a Replacement License 49 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group Maintenance 50 Software licenses normally require little maintenance and administration The administrative tasks include the following Verifying that a license was installed properly To verify that a software license was properly installed and is functioning try using an application covered by the license If the application works the license is functioning Deleting a license To delete a nodelocked license simply remove the line containing the license and any comments that go with it from the license file usually var netls nodelock To delete a concurrent license you run your license administration application as superuser identify the server vendor product and license you want to delete and delete it For more information about deleting nodelocked and
28. Work Group Computing User s and Administrator s Guide Document Number 007 3484 001 CONTRIBUTORS Written by Pete Harbeson Illustrated by Dany Galgani Edited by Christina Cary Production by Linda Rae Sande Engineering contributions by Bob Green 1996 Silicon Graphics Inc All Rights Reserved The contents of this document may not be copied or duplicated in any form in whole or in part without the prior written permission of Silicon Graphics Inc RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGEND Use duplication or disclosure of the technical data contained in this document by the Government is subject to restrictions as set forth in subdivision c 1 ii of the Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software clause at DFARS 52 227 7013 and or in similar or successor clauses in the FAR or in the DOD or NASA FAR Supplement Unpublished rights reserved under the Copyright Laws of the United States Contractor manufacturer is Silicon Graphics Inc 2011 N Shoreline Blvd Mountain View CA 94043 1389 Silicon Graphics and the Silicon Graphics logo are registered trademarks and Extent File System IRIS InSight IRIS Networker IRIX and XFS are trademarks of Silicon Graphics Inc DynaWeb is trademark of Electronic Book Technologies FLEXIm is a registered trademark of Globetrotter Software Inc Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer Inc NetLS is a trademark of Apollo Computer Inc a subsidiary of Hewlett Parkard Company Netsc
29. a file that contains information about product requirements and the installation environment for the product The name of the product description file is the short name for the product For example the name of the product description file for the Fortran 77 Compiler product is ftn_dev Installation Database The installation database is a file that contains installation information for every file in the product The name of the installation database is the shortname with an idb extension For example the name of the installation database for the Fortran 77 Compiler product is ftn_dev idb Overview of Software Installation Images An image is a collection of installable files that perform a similar or complementary function Software products usually contain at least two images Providing more than one image makes it possible to install only the software you need For example it is possible to install the images that contain the executable programs of a product without installing the release notes image Patch Releases A patch is a collection of one or more files that correct flaws in the performance reliability or security of a specific software product a patch release is a distribution containing one or more patches Each patch remedies a specific set of reported errors in the version of the product to which the patch applies Every patch is identified by a unique number such as patchSG1234567 for example The number is used in
30. ader To make a backup of your system using an IRIX command use the Backup command Although the Backup command is a front end interface to the bru command Backup also writes the disk volume header on the tape so that the Recover System option can reconstruct the boot blocks which are not written to the tape using other backup commands General Backup Procedure General Backup Procedure Follow these steps when making a backup no matter which backup utility you use 1 Make sure the tape drive is clean The hardware manual that came with your drive should state how and how often to clean the drive Dirty tape heads can cause read and write errors New tapes shed more oxide than older tapes so you should clean your drive more frequently if you use a lot of new tapes Make sure you have enough backup media on hand The bru utility has an option to check the size of a backup so you can determine if you have enough media You can also use such utilities as du and df to determine the size of directories and filesystems respectively Also use good quality media Considering the value of your data use the best quality media you can afford Run fsck first on EFS filesystems if you are backing up an entire filesystem to make sure you do not create a tape of a damaged filesystem You must unmount a filesystem before checking it with fsck so plan your backup schedule accordingly This step is not necessary if you are backing u
31. an NIS server Setting Up the NIS Master Server After choosing the system you want to use as the NIS master server for your work group you must follow four overall steps to set up the NIS master server For more information about setting up the NIS master server see the NIS Administration Guide 1 Set the master server s domain name Choose a domain name based on your site s configuration It is possible but not necessary for the domain name to coincide with the system s Internet domain name if any Build the master maps Building the master maps is mostly automatic You start the process by issuing the appropriate commands to the NIS master server The server software then proceeds to build maps of names addresses and other information Start NIS on the master server You can start NIS on the master server by rebooting the system restarting the network or manually starting the NIS software As soon as NIS is started on the master server it is available to clients Test the NIS master server The simplest way to check to make sure the NIS master server is functioning properly is to use its services from the same system which is also an NIS client One way to check is the command ypwhich from a shell window If the NIS master server is functioning it should return its own name ypwhich localhost Administering NIS Administering NIS Setting Up NIS Clients There are four parts to the procedure fo
32. ape Navigator is a trademark of Netscape Communications Corp NFS is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc PostScript is registered trademark of Adobe Systems Inc UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through X Open Company Ltd St Peter s Basilica image courtesy of ENEL SpA and InfoByte SpA Disk Thrower image courtesy of Xavier Berenguer Animatica Work Group Computing User s and Administrator s Guide Document Number 007 3484 001 Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables xi About Work Group Computing 1 The Advantages of Work Group Computing 1 Added Capabilities 1 Sharing Information 1 How Work Group Computing Works 2 Clients and Servers 2 Users and Administrators 2 Work Group Computing Administration 3 Choosing an Administrator and Privileged Users 3 About User Privileges and the Primary User 3 User 3 Privileged User 4 Administrator 4 The Responsibilities of Privileged Users 5 The Network Administrator s Role 5 Contents Using System Administration Tools 6 The System Toolchest 6 System Manager 7 Disk Manager 7 User Manager 8 NFS Mount Manager 8 Printer Manager 8 Software Manager 8 Backup amp Restore 8 View System Log 9 Run Confidence Tests 9 Logging In as root Through a Shell Window 9 Filesystems and Files 11 Filesystem Administration 11 About Filesystems 11 Inodes 13 Types of Files 14 Hard Links and Symbolic Lin
33. at you want Remember that distribution directories and CD ROM distributions have an identical structure For more information about creating a distribution directory see IRIX Admin Software Installation and Licensing Configuring an Installation Account Installations generally use the guest account on the server This means that the installation server s guest account must not be password protected If the guest account on the server is either unavailable or password protected you must provide an alternate means for accessing the server You can allow access to the server in any of these ways e Remove the password from guest while installations are taking place e Use an account other than guest on the server the alternate account must not be password protected and specify the alternate account when starting the installation e Use a password protected account on the server for installations and create a rhosts file for the installation account The installation account must have read permissions on the distribution source 33 Chapter 3 Installing and Setting Up Software 34 Backing Up the Target Systems Although backing up the target is not a requirement for installation it is strongly recommended The Personal System Administration Guide describes general backup procedures and using System Manager to perform backups Consider backing up these files e User files that are created or copied to the target Any f
34. cal and Floppy Disk Filesystems 63 Tape Drives 63 Adding a Tape Drive 64 Troubleshooting 64 Troubleshooting Your Printing System 64 Troubleshooting Tape Drives 65 Troubleshooting Tape Read Errors 66 vii Contents 7 Security 67 Overview of System Security 67 Components of Security 68 Physical Security 68 Passwords 68 PROM Passwords 69 Second Dialup Passwords 69 Creating a Shadow Password File 70 Password Aging 70 Checking the Password File 70 File and Directory Permissions 71 Security Checklists 72 Security for Administrators 73 8 Sharing Documentation 75 Overview and Benefits of Sharing Documentation 75 IRIS InSight and DynaWeb 75 How DynaWeb Works 75 DynaWeb Directory Structure 76 Collections 77 Home Page 77 Publisher s Page 77 Access and Error Logs 78 CGI Scripts 78 Clickable Graphics 78 Setting Up DynaWeb for Your Work Group 78 DynaWeb Setup Options 78 DynaWeb Setup Process 79 Troubleshooting DynaWeb 80 Directories 80 Home Page 81 Client Problems 81 Authentication 82 viii List of Figures Figure 2 1 IRIX Filesystems 12 Figure 4 1 Licensing Process for New Software part 1 47 Figure 4 2 Licensing Process for New Software part 2 48 Figure 4 3 Licensing Process for a Replacement License 49 Figure 5 1 Basic NIS Domain 55 List of Tables Table 2 1 Filesystem File Types 14 xi Chapter 1 About Work Group Computing The Advantages of Work Group Computing Work group c
35. can be accomplished on a standalone non networked machine Planning and Setting Up Your Licensing Scheme It is the responsibility of the system administrator to create a software licensing scheme for the work group The overall steps in planning and setting up a software licensing scheme are as follows e Decide whether to implement license groups e Set up license groups if any e Choose systems to be Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers e Set up Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers 44 Planning and Setting Up Your Licensing Scheme Choosing Whether to Implement License Groups License groups are typically used to restrict licenses to a particular set of systems on a network A license group can include systems on different segments of a multi segment network Each system can belong to only one license group You would normally implement license groups only if your work group consists of subgroups of users who need access to specific applications and definitely do not need access to applications needed by other subgroups Because work groups tend to be small and users generally need the same or similar applications work group environments do not typically implement license groups Setting Up License Groups The first step in setting up a license group is determining the systems that will be included in a license group This includes the Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers for the
36. concurrent licenses see the Network License System Administration Guide Monitoring license usage You can use your administration software generally s_stat to monitor the names of Network License Servers on the network the licensed products at all servers or at selected servers the current users of licensed products and their user ID host name group number of licenses held and times they started using the products the licenses installed at each Network License Server the number of active licenses and their start and expiration dates the use of products the number of licenses in use the total number of licenses and the licenses available For more information about monitoring license usage see the ls_stat reference page Troubleshooting Concurrent Licenses Generating reports on license activity You can use your license administration software generally Is_rpt to generate reports about the activities on a Network License Server These reports can help you track demand for particular software products For details about generating license activity reports see the ls_rpt reference page Identifying licenses in a nodelock file To locate a particular license in a license file open the file in a text editor and look for comments that identify the product name associated with each license Comment lines start with If you cannot find the information you need in comments try commenting out by pre
37. d Chapter 1 About Work Group Computing You are now logged in to the root account and are located in the root directory When you are logged in as root the IRIX prompt is a pound sign rather than a percent sign To log out of the root account enter logout The shell window disappears 10 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files Filesystem Administration About Filesystems Setting up and maintaining a filesystem is a system administrative task If you are primarily a user in your work group read the first part of this chapter to get a general understanding of filesystems and read the section Backup and Recovery so that you understand what you need to do to protect the information on your system If you are responsible for system administration in your work group read all of this chapter to fully understand filesystems including setup maintenance backup and recovery If you store paper documents in a a filing cabinet you can choose to organize them any number of ways for example alphabetically by number or by date The method you choose is your filing system In much the same way when your store information on a disk connected to your workstation the manner in which it is stored is determined by the installed filesystem Your Silicon Graphics system can use any of several different filesystems Technically speaking a filesystem is a data structure that organizes files and directories on a d
38. d software product can be restricted to a particular system open to the entire work group or anything in between When you obtain a software product it generally comes with a license information sheet The license information sheet comes in a variety of forms it might accompany the product or you might receive it separately by mail FAX or e mail Be sure to store license information sheets in a safe place License information sheets include information about the vendor and the product as well as the license password and duration You need the information on the license information sheet in order to install and use the software product How Licensing Works There are two types of software licenses nodelocked and concurrent A concurrent license is sometimes referred to as a floating license When a concurrent license is installed on a network server licenses can be made available to anyone running the application on a client system sharing the same network The number of concurrent users is managed by the license server and limited to a pre determined number of users Overview of Software Licensing and Administration Generally any user in the work group has access to a concurrent license from any workstation A nodelocked license in contrast ties software to a particular host system That is when an application has a nodelocked license it can run only on the machine on which it is installed A work group can and often will
39. ding 1 and a domain called eng Building 1 Figure 5 1 Basic NIS Domain The domain eng consists of the master server one slave server and three clients One system on the network does not participate in NIS at this time but may be included in the domain at a later date NIS and Internet Domains NIS domains can be organized to coincide with Internet domain names In the Internet naming hierarchy a domain name is comprised of a stream of names separated by dots For example if eng widgets com is an Internet domain it could also be used as the name of the NIS domain Some administrators name their NIS domains with simple names and the Internet domain names separated with dots For example the NIS domain name might be eng and the Internet domain name might be eng widgets com Using this naming scheme the two domains can be easily distinguished Other administrators prefer to have the NIS and Internet domain names coincide This is strictly a matter of choice there is no explicit relationship between NIS and Internet domains However to avoid confusion choosing one of these two naming schemes is recommended See the IRIX Admin Networking and Mail for details on Internet domains 55 Chapter 5 Identifying Your Work Group Setting Up NIS 56 Setting up NIS involves setting up the NIS master server and setting up the clients An NIS server does not need to be a dedicated system any system on the network can function as
40. ditional information about these items see the NIS Administration Guide Chapter 6 Peripheral Devices About Peripheral Devices In work group computing peripheral devices connected to one workstation or server can be accessible to everyone The most common peripheral device to be shared is a printer but other devices such as optical scanners and CD ROM and tape drives can also be shared The advantages of making peripheral devices available throughout the work group include the following e Maintenance and administration of peripherals such as printers and scanners can be centralized e Resources can be more carefully allocated across the work group e Services such as regular backup can be centralized Setting Up Peripheral Devices It is often the responsibility of the administrator to set up peripheral devices The first thing to consider in setting up a device is its location Some peripherals such as printers scanners and modems tend to be kept in a central location often nearest to the administrator for ease of administration maintenance and security Other devices such as tape drives and floppy drives may be located at users workstations In determining the best location for peripheral devices consider these factors e How many work group members will typically use the device e How often will they need the device e What special maintenance does the device require for example replacing toner
41. e name The name for a reference page subsystem always contains the letters man in the image segment For example dmedia_dev contains the software subsystem dmedia_dev sw movie and a reference page subsystem called dmedia_dev man movie 35 Chapter 3 Installing and Setting Up Software Installing Software Using the Software Manager The Software Manager lets you install and remove both operating system software and optional product software Any user or privileged user can use the Software Manager to view a list of installed software but only the administrator or anyone who knows the password for the root account can use it to install or remove software To install software you specify where the new software is located Then you can install either a default set of software by clicking Install Automatically or a customized set of software by clicking Customize Installation When you click the Customize Installation button you re requesting a more informative view of the software that s available If a checkmark appeared in the Upgrade Products and or New Products check boxes in the Install Automatically view these products and their default subsystems remain selected for installation Note If the root account on a system has a password that password must be entered in order to install software System Software Maintenance 36 This section contains procedures that may be necessary to keep the software installation
42. e the online files centrally rather than replicating the files on each system in the workgroup The administrator generally sets up and maintains the shared documentation for the work group You can share documentation throughout your work group by using the IRIS InSight system on a DynaWeb server DynaWeb enables you to gain access to the shared documentation by using a browser for example Netscape Navigator IRIS InSight and DynaWeb A DynaWeb server makes IRIS InSight books available to World Wide Web clients DynaWeb dynamically converts the InSight Standard Generalized Markup Language SGML tagged text and graphics into HyperText Markup Language HTML form This section explains the components of the DynaWeb server including the programs used to administer it the directory structure of the DynaWeb Server and the features of the DynaWeb server that give the individual administrator great flexibility configuring the server How DynaWeb Works DynaWeb has two major components a server and an SGML to HTML converter Like any Web server a DynaWeb server listens for HTTP requests from clients Each request contains a URL that identifies the server and a particular block of data such as a home page a section of text or an image 75 Chapter 8 Sharing Documentation 76 IRIS InSight books are binary files that contain SGML tagged text and graphics The SGML to HTML converter transforms each request for all or part of an I
43. eck a password file you typically use the pwck command File and Directory Permissions Be conservative when establishing or changing permission bit settings on all files and directories The safest settings do not allow write access but where this is not possible it may be possible to limit write access to the owner of the file or directory or at least just to the owner and the group The following files and directories are universally available for read and write access on IRIX as shipped Depending on your site requirements you may wish to change the permissions on these files to be more restrictive Caution Restricting permissions on historically open directories such as tmp usr tmp O and var tmp linked to usr tmp can cause serious malfunctions in many programs applications and system utilities that write temporary files on behalf of users in these directories Below is a partial list of such directories e tmp e usr demos xsession e usr Insight tmp e usr Insight tmp ebtpriv e usr Insight tmp ebtpub e usr Insight tmp install insight log e f usr lib emacs maclib e usr lib showcase fonts e usr lib showcase images 71 Chapter 7 Security Security Checklists usr lib showcase models usr lib showcase templates usr tmp O var spool locks var spool uucppublic var tmp For additional information about security see IRIX Admin Backup Security and Accounting In attending t
44. else needs it s easy to gain access to it An important component of sharing information in a work group computing system is consistent naming All of the computers in the work group for example have names Chapter 1 About Work Group Computing Each computer must have a record of all of the other machine names and of the names of the users of those machines The Network Information System NIS provides an automated way of keeping records of those names as well as a wealth of other information about all the machines and users in the work group How Work Group Computing Works Work Group computing is a concept as well as a collection of hardware and software connected by a network The concept is that the computing resources of an organization should be available at the time and place they re needed When Jennifer needs additional disk space to store a massive 3D rendering it doesn t make sense to purchase that storage when it already exists It might exist somewhere else in the work group on Ben s machine for example Work Group computing is primarily about designing a computing environment in which the resources of the whole system are flexible enough to meet the needs of any user regardless of their physical location or their personal workstation s physical capabilities Clients and Servers Clients and servers are integral to work group computing Clients and servers are not physical machines they are processes that ha
45. ename Removing one of the links has no effect on the other The file is not removed until there are no links to it the number of links to the file the link count is stored in the file s inode Another type of link is the symbolic link This type of link is actually a file The file contains a text string which is the pathname of another file or directory Because a symbolic link is a file it has its own owners and permissions The file or directory it points to can be in another filesystem If the file or directory that a symbolic link points to is removed it is no longer available and the symbolic link becomes useless until the target is recreated it is called a dangling symbolic link Symbolic links are created with the In command with the s option For example to create a symbolic link called linkdir to the directory origdir enter this command ln s origdir linkdir The output of ls ld for the symbolic link is shown below Notice that the permissions and other information don t match The listing for linkdir shows that it is a symbolic link to origdir ls ld linkdir origdir drwxrwxrwt 13 sys sys 2048 Apr 5 11 37 origdir lrwxrwxr x 1 joyce user 8 Apr 5 11 52 linkdir gt origdir When you use in pathnames that involve symbolic links be aware that refers to the parent directory of the true file or directory not the parent of the directory that contains the symbolic link 15 Chapter 2 Filesys
46. er For example assume that you have four CDs with sequence numbers 400 500 600 and 600 The CD labeled 400 is installed first followed by the CD labeled 500 The order of the two CDs labeled 600 is irrelevant as long as they are installed last Making Installable Software Available to the Work Group If you are installing from several distribution directories check to see what products are in each directory Plan to install the products in this order e installation tools e operating system software e communications software e compilers e optional software About Miniroot Installations For installations where fundamental IRIX services such as filesystem management are either unavailable or unreliable a special installation method is required This method known as a miniroot installation relies on services in the target s programmable read only memory PROM to transfer special installation tools including Inst from the distribution source This transfer is referred to as loading the miniroot For more information about miniroot installations see IRIX Admin Software Installation and Licensing Installing Reference Pages The reference pages manual pages that apply to a product are shipped as a software component of the product The software subsystems in a product usually have a corresponding reference page subsystem The names of the software and reference page subsystems differ only in the image segment of th
47. er Manager enables users to perform these tasks e View information about their own login account e View information about other login accounts e Change business card information about their own account In addition privileged users can use the User Manager to create change and delete user login accounts NFS Mount Manager The NFS Mount Manager is available only on systems that have the optional NFS software installed The NFS Mount Manager lets privileged users access mount directories on other systems so that users can access the directories as if they resided on the local system Printer Manager With the Printer Manager users can view the list of available printers and drag printer icons onto their desktops for use Additionally privileged users can use the Printer Manager to set up the software for local or remote printers so the system can access the printers Software Manager Users and privileged users can view a list of installed software by using the Software Manager The Software Manager also enables the administrator to install and remove software Backup amp Restore Backup amp Restore enables users to to back up their own files and directories The administrator can use Backup amp Restore to create full system backups from which the entire system can be restored in the event of a serious system failure Using System Administration Tools View System Log View System Log displays a log of all the
48. erable amount of software For any target that is not equipped with a CD ROM drive the distribution source must be a remote CD ROM drive or distribution directory Setting Up an Installation Server You can create an installation server on almost any system in your network that is reliable and has adequate disk resources The distribution source may be a local CD ROM drive or a distribution directory Making Installable Software Available to the Work Group Any system that you plan to use as an installation server must be accessible from the remote targets This means that communications between the server and targets must support forwarding of boot files and Trivial File Transfer Protocol TFTP file transfers In addition the installation server must contain a user account that is available to target systems Creating a Distribution Directory After you have chosen an installation server the next step is to create a distribution directory on it The CD ROM drive from which you copy the distribution software may be either a local or remote drive You can copy several CDs to the distribution directory if you wish however do not include more than one release of a given product in the directory different distribution directories must be created for different releases of a product You can create a software distribution directory that contains fewer products than are in the CD ROM distribution by copying the files for just the products th
49. ere is nothing you can do with system software to prevent physical theft of the hardware you can limit the ability of intruders to boot their programs or to otherwise damage your system at its lowest levels with a PROM password You can reset the PROM password on most systems as long as you have the root password If you cannot successfully reset the PROM password you must remove the PROM or a jumper from your CPU board See the Owner s Guide for the system for information on this procedure Second Dialup Passwords If a system requires additional protection you can establish a system password If you do this users who log in on specific ports ttys are prompted for a system password in addition to their account passwords 69 Chapter 7 Security 70 System passwords are normally used only on dialup lines and are often referred to as dialup passwords You can use them on standard lines but this is usually not necessary Creating a Shadow Password File Password files are generally accessible to any user of a system Although the file is encrypted if a copy of the file can be made someone could attempt to decrypt it You can prevent this type of attack by using a shadow password file A shadow password file is a copy of the standard password file that is not accessible by non privileged users The shadow password file is called etc shadow Once shadow passwords have been LA initialized the password field in each
50. etc passwd entry is replaced by an x character Note Shadow passwords work differently with NIS See the shadow 4 reference page for details on the use of shadow passwords with NIS Password Aging You can use the password aging mechanism to force users to change their passwords periodically It also prevents a user from changing a new password before a specified time interval You can also force a user to change his or her password immediately Password aging does not provide as strong protection as it might seem most users simply choose two passwords instead of one This is because when password aging is enforced most users alternate between two passwords that they find easy to remember rather than inventing new passwords every time their old ones expire You can set passwords to expire after any length of time from a day to several months or longer Note Password aging is not supported for NIS entries Checking the Password File From time to time you should scan the password file on your system and optionally perform this procedure on users systems as well You can check the password file for completeness and consistency of information If unauthorized access has been attempted this type of checking may detect it You can validate Components of Security e the number of fields in each entry e the login name e the user ID number e the group ID number e the login directory e the executed program To ch
51. ger can be designated as the default printer for the client system In most cases you should designate a default printer for each client system in your work group For more information about setting up printer connections on a print client see the Personal System Administration Guide Printer Administration Administering printing services for a work group generally involves the following tasks e Add and remove printers as necessary You can use the Print Manager to add and remove printers from client systems e Change default printers When users printing needs change or additional printing resources become available on your network changing the default printer on some or all workstations may be appropriate You can use the Print Manager to set as default any printer that has been added to client systems 61 Chapter 6 Peripheral Devices 62 e Monitor print server status When a print job is sent from a print client to a print server it can appear to the client that the job is being printed regardless of its actual status on the print server To monitor status of a print request on a print server use the Print Manager which can detect the true status of a remote print job over the network e Cancel print server requests as necessary When it is necessary to cancel a print request you can use the Print Manager Note that if the print server is not handling a large number of requests and the document to be printed
52. ges combined in a unique way e They are composed of different kinds of characters such as digits and punctuation Components of Security Easily guessed passwords have these characteristics e They are short e They consist of single words that are in a dictionary e They are the same as the account name or the account name spelled backward e They contain the name of the user s department or project e They consist of the user s name or initials e They contain the license number of the user s car a spouse or friend s name the user s home address phone number age or other obvious information Wu Wu nu e They are obvious for example top secret friend key god me and so on secret private password PROM Passwords Your system has a facility that allows you to require a password from users who attempt to gain access to the Command PROM Monitor This gives greater control over who may perform system administration tasks Traditionally if an intruder gains access to your system hardware there is little you can do to maintain system security In the simplest case the intruder switches off the system then turns it on again and instructs the system from the console to boot a program other than your usual operating system Alternatively the intruder could simply remove the hard disk from your system and install it on another system and read your files While th
53. group After the systems are identified setting up the group involves creating a g b_obj txt file in the var ncs directory on each system in the group For detailed instructions see the Network License System Administration Guide It is also possible to set up license groups manually after Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers are set up Because manual setup is significantly more difficult it is recommended that you set up any license groups for your work group first before setting up Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers Choosing Systems to be Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers Use the guidelines below to choose systems to be Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers Keep in mind that a single system can be both a Global Location Broker and a Network License Server and can run licensed applications e When a concurrent license has been created for a specific system that system must be a Network License Server The system is listed on the license information sheet the target sysinfo or serial number items identify it e The systems that you choose for Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers should be stable they should not be systems that are frequently taken down or unavailable Good choices are systems that are already designated server systems within the network e Systems that are Global Location Brokers and or Network License Servers must be able to use T
54. idge tape device is used primarily for filesystem backups and data transfer 63 Chapter 6 Peripheral Devices Troubleshooting 64 For information on backing up data onto tapes see IRIX Admin Backup Security and Accounting If you are installing a tape drive see the installation instructions furnished with the hardware Almost all workstations are configured with some sort of tape device for making backup copies of your files Whether you maintain one system or a network of hundreds of workstations you will eventually have to use and maintain some form of tape drive Adding a Tape Drive To install a tape drive on an IRIX system follow the hardware installation instructions furnished with your tape drive Make sure you carefully follow any instructions regarding drive terminators If you are adding a tape drive to a system that does not have one the software configuration is taken care of automatically when the system boots This section discusses some troubleshooting tips for problems arising with peripheral devices Troubleshooting Your Printing System If you send a print request to a printer and you do not receive any output use the checklist below to find the problem You can find additional troubleshooting information in the printer manufacturer s hardware manual and in IRIX Admin Peripheral Devices e Is the printer turned on Printers do not always indicate clearly if they are turned on Make sure the pri
55. ient processes obtain NIS services from another In this way the NIS service remains available even when an NIS server system goes down NIS Servers Every NIS server contains a copy of the NIS database There are two types of servers e A master server is a server on which the NIS databases are created and maintained e A slave server contains a duplicate copy of the database In most work group environments a single NIS server is sufficient However if slave servers are needed automatic propagation ensures the consistency of database information between the master server and its slave servers NIS Maps The NIS database is made up of a group of files known as maps Maps are created with NIS tools that convert input files usually standard ASCII files to files in database record dbm format Since data in dbm format is faster to find than ASCII data using dbm files increases NIS performance Maps are composed of keys and values A key is a particular field in the map that the client must specify whenever it queries the map Values are attributes of the key returned from the query For example a key might be the name of an individual system and a value might be its Internet address NIS Domains An NIS domain is a collection of systems using the same NIS database To participate in the NIS service a system must belong to an NIS domain About Work Group Identification Figure 4 1 shows the basic layout for the systems in Buil
56. ile on the target that was not put there during the software installation process is considered a user file e Configuration files that contain information unique to the target system or the site These files are created during installation but are likely to be modified after they are installed The unique information in these files is not destroyed during an installation However the pre installation copy of these configuration files is helpful if you decide to go back to the earlier software release after installation Planning the Order of Installation If you expect to install software from more than one CD or distribution directory you must plan the installation order since some products require that other products be installed first If you are installing from multiple CDs use the sequence numbers on their labels to put the CDs in order Install the CDs starting with the lowest sequence number first Use these guidelines to plan the order of your installation e Ifany CD or distribution directory that you install contains installation tools be sure to install that CD first CDs containing installation tools are clearly marked e If any CD has two sequence numbers that CD is used twice during the installation If you find no intervening sequence numbers you need to insert the CD only once during the installation e If you have two or more CDs with the same sequence number the order of those CDs relative to each other does not matt
57. ility that s the responsibility that comes with the power of work group computing Work Group Computing Administration Choosing an Administrator and Privileged Users Within your own work group it is important to decide which people will be responsible for keeping the system in good running order and if the system is connected to a network who will work in conjunction with the network administrator to access network services In some work groups you may also need to designate a network administrator Administrative tasks are not in many work group environments allocated to just one person Even if the work group tends to have one primary administrator system administration is seldom that person s only job Because administrative responsibilities are often shared in a work group it is important that each user have some familiarity with those responsibilities About User Privileges and the Primary User Because many people may use the same system the system provides a built in security scheme where you can grant different people different capabilities for changing the system There are three levels of capability User A user is any person who has a login account on a system After logging in users can change only their personal work areas A user can run the graphical administration tools from the System toolchest but the features of the tools that change system information are not available Chapter 1 About Work Group Co
58. in prompted for your information Make sure all URLs match the DWEB_HOST parameter Otherwise the server thinks you are not authenticated and tries to validate you again This will happen every time you link to a URL that contains a different hostname For example mycomputer 88 does not match mycomputer mycompany com 88 Tell Us About This Manual As a user of Silicon Graphics products you can help us to better understand your needs and to improve the quality of our documentation Any information that you provide will be useful Here is a list of suggested topics General impression of the document Omission of material that you expected to find Technical errors Relevance of the material to the job you had to do Quality of the printing and binding Please send the title and part number of the document with your comments The part number for this document is 007 3484 001 Thank you Three Ways to Reach Us To send your comments by electronic mail use either of these addresses On the Internet techpubs sgi com For UUCP mail through any backbone site your_site sgi techpubs To fax your comments or annotated copies of manual pages use this fax number 415 965 0964 To send your comments by traditional mail use this address Technical Publications Silicon Graphics Inc 2011 North Shoreline Boulevard M S 535 Mountain View California 94043 1389
59. in a minute or so with the Global Location Broker clock s and that the clocks of all the Global Location Brokers also agree e Try stopping and restarting all Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers on the network For more information about troubleshooting concurrent licenses see the Network License System Administration Guide 52 Chapter 5 Identifying Your Work Group About Work Group Identification One of the chief benefits of work group computing is the ability to use the facilities and information throughout the work group network rather than relying only on facilities and information on an individual machine In order to make the resources of the work group available the first step is to identify those resources and provide a way to find them simply and easily The optional Network Information System NIS provides that service Setting up and administering NIS is an administrative responsibility In a work group environment NIS is relatively transparent to users as it simply provides services they can use as a matter of course Introduction to NIS NIS is a network lookup service that provides a centralized database of information about the network to systems participating in the service The NIS database is fully replicated on selected systems and can be queried by participating systems on an as needed basis Maintenance of the database is performed on a central system The purpose of NIS is to
60. iorated or altered in the copying process If you want to store data reliably for several years consider using optical disk 25 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 26 Reusing Tapes You can reuse tapes but with wear the quality of a tape degrades The more important the data the more precautions you should take including using new tapes If a tape goes bad mark it as bad and discard it Write bad on the tape case before you throw it out so that someone doesn t accidentally try to use it Never try to reuse an obviously bad tape The cost of a new tape is minimal compared to the value of the data you are storing on it System Backups To make a backup of your system on any system with a graphical user interface bring up the System menu on the System Toolchest and select the Backup amp Restore menu item From the Backup amp Restore window follow the prompts to perform your backup A complete set of instructions for this procedure is available in the Personal System Administration Guide Backups made with the Backup amp Restore window are the easiest to make and use and are accessible from the Recover System option on the System Maintenance Menu if they are full system backups When you make a full system backup the command also makes a backup of the files in the disk volume header and saves the information in a file that is stored on tape This file is used during system recovery to restore a damaged volume he
61. is short the job may be printed before you can cancel it CD ROM Floptical and Floppy Disk Drives One of the key concepts in work group computing is that devices connected to one system can be accessible to all systems on the network The administrator s initial role in regard to CD ROM floptical and floppy disk drives is to determine the appropriate allocation of drives Depending on the needs of your work group each system may need its own drive s or a single centrally located drive may suffice The overall steps for setting up a CD ROM floptical or floppy disk drive are as follows 1 Install the drive For specific instructions see the documentation that came with the drive 2 Mount the filesystem on the drive for use on the local system You can use the DiskManager to mount filesystems automatically 3 Ifthe filesystem will be used on remote systems export the filesystem You must have NFS installed to export a filesystem See the ONC3 NFS Administration Guide for more information on exporting filesystems CD ROM Filesystems CD ROM filesystems are always read only When you are finished using the filesystem issue the eject command The filesystem is unmounted and the CD ROM is ejected from the drive Any user can unmount and eject a CD ROM with the eject command Setting Up Peripheral Devices Floptical and Floppy Disk Filesystems Many different kinds of floptical and floppy disk drives are supported including
62. isk partition so that they can be easily retrieved Only one filesystem can reside on a disk partition a disk always has at least one partition and may have several A file is a one dimensional array of bytes that can be in any possible order and can represent literally any information from a memo to a three dimensional model to an application program Information about each file is stored in structures called inodes inodes are described in the next section Inodes A file exists within a single filesystem A directory is a container that stores files and other directories It is merely another type of file that the user is permitted to use but not allowed to write the operating system itself retains the responsibility for writing directories Directories cannot span filesystems The combination of directories and files make up a filesystem 11 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 12 The starting point of any filesystem is an unnamed directory that serves as the root for that particular filesystem In the IRIX operating system there is always one filesystem that is itself referred to by that name the root filesystem Traditionally the root directory of the root filesystem is represented by a single slash Filesystems are attached to the directory hierarchy by the mount command The following illustration shows root filesystem with a mount point of a single slash and two additional filesystems with mount points of d2 and
63. ks 14 Filesystem Names 16 Setting Up Shared Filesystems 16 Network File Systems NFS 16 Maintaining Filesystems 17 Mounting and Unmounting Filesystems 17 Manually Mounting Filesystems 17 Mounting Filesystems Automatically With the etc fstab File 18 Mounting a Remote Filesystem Automatically 18 Unmounting Filesystems 18 Administration Considerations 19 Backup and Recovery 19 Types of Backup Media 20 Choosing a Backup Tool 20 Contents Backup Strategies 21 When and What to Back Up 22 Root Filesystems 22 User Filesystems 23 Incremental Backups 23 Backing Up Files Across a Network 23 Automatic Backups 24 Storing Backups 25 How Long to Keep Backups 25 Reusing Tapes 26 System Backups 26 General Backup Procedure 27 Installing and Setting Up Software 29 Overview of Software Installation 29 Software Product 29 About Software Product Releases 30 Product Descriptions 30 Installation Database 30 Images 31 Patch Releases 31 How Software Installation Works 31 Making Installable Software Available to the Work Group 32 Selecting a Distribution Source 32 Setting Up an Installation Server 32 Creating a Distribution Directory 33 Configuring an Installation Account 33 Backing Up the Target Systems 34 Planning the Order of Installation 34 About Miniroot Installations 35 Installing Reference Pages 35 Installing Software Using the Software Manager 36 Contents System Software Maintenance 36 Installing a Software Update 36 Installing O
64. ks to see if a license file usually var netls nodelock exists and there is a valid license entry for the application If there is a valid license the application runs If the nodelock file doesn t exist or there is no valid entry for the application then the application attempts to run using a concurrent license 43 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group Concurrent License Startup When an application using a concurrent license starts up it checks the Network License Server for an available license If a license is available it is granted and the application runs When the user exits the application the application releases the license In checking the Network License Server an application uses a service called a Global Location Broker A Global Location Broker is a system on the network that maintains a database the GLB database containing the address es of the Network License Servers on the network and a list of the vendors that have product licenses at each server Any network on which concurrent licenses are used must have at least one Network License Server and Global Location Broker Large networks may have many Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers Even in a work group environment you may want to consider having more than one For more information see Planning and Setting Up Your Licensing Scheme on page 44 Note Concurrent licensing requires a network while nodelocked licensing
65. le of primary user to someone else The Responsibilities of Privileged Users A privileged user can use administration tools to perform the tasks listed below For more information about these tasks see the Personal System Administration Guide e Setting up the system initially as a standalone system or as a member of an existing network e Creating login accounts so all users of the system can access it If the system will be connected to a network the administrator may work in conjunction with the network administrator e Connecting any peripheral devices and configuring software so that the devices work properly e Monitoring and troubleshooting the system to keep it working efficiently and properly e Contacting the network administrator before connecting a system to the network The network administrator provides information that uniquely identifies each system on the network and ensures that the regular users of a system can have accounts on other systems on the network e Making all some or none of a system s directories available to all some or none of the other systems and users on the network e Providing access to printers on other systems so the users of a system can send files to them e Providing access to disk space that s available on other systems on the network The Network Administrator s Role The responsibilities of a network administrator vary greatly from site to site Ina work group environment
66. linked directory is itself linked to another directory Web clients can jump to and move downward from there Troubleshooting DynaWeb Home Page The server does not display your site specific home page The filename of the home page is set by the DWEB_HOMEPAGE configuration parameter To use a different filename for the home page you must assign your own filename as the value of DWEB_HOMEPAGE The hypertext link to your collections fails to bring up your collection list Ensure that the XREF value in the link matches the value of the DWEB_COLLECTMAGIC configuration parameter The server cannot find your home page after you change its name in the server configuration file Check the file and its pathname The values of resource parameters must contain a leading slash for example docs my homepage html This slash is necessary because the server appends the value of file parameters to the value of DWEB_ROOTDIR to produce the full directory path Client Problems A client can t access the DynaWeb server Make sure the server is responding Check the configuration file for errors Make sure the file usr lib Insight dweb data config dynaweb cfg exists A button does not appear on the button bar Check the server configuration file to ensure that the button assignment is not disabled by the insertion of a at the start of the line Make sure that the icon file is present in the servroot icon
67. ly If there are workstations at your site from other manufacturers you may wish to use a backup utility that is common to all the workstations IRIX provides the following utilities for backing up your data e System Manager providing backup functions this is the recommended tool if you are backing up your own filesystem e bru a backup tool featuring automatic file compression space estimates and integrity checking e Backup and Restore command line front ends to the bru utility e dump and restore standard UNIX utilities cannot back up XFS filesystems e xfsdump and xfsrestore for XFS filesystems XFS compatible versions of dump and restore e tar the most common UNIX backup utility almost certainly available on workstations from other manufacturers Backup Strategies Backup Strategies e cpio a standard UNIX command often combined in command line pipes with other commands e dd astandard UNIX command to read input and write output Optional products for Silicon Graphics systems are also available IRIS NetWorker is a scalable full featured data management tool for data backup and recovery You can use IRIS NetWorker to back up data on high end servers or centrally manage backups for all your network workstations and file servers For more information about backup tools see the Personal System Administration Guide and IRIX Admin Backup Security and Accounting As the work group administrator yo
68. mputing Privileged User A person whose login account includes administrative privileges is a privileged user When privileged users log in they can change their personal work areas and can use the graphical administration tools to change or customize the entire system for example to set up a disk or create a login account There can be more than one privileged user on the same system Administrator The administrator of a system is the person who can use the most privileged account the root account This person should have a personal login account for daily use but when there are serious system problems to correct the person logs in to the root account to change system information using the graphical tools or using the IRIX shell The administrator has all the capabilities of a privileged user as well as the ability to change information in the root account such as the password and to log in to an IRIX shell as root Because there is only one root account on a system there is only one administrator per system The System Manager window for a particular system includes the name of the system s administrator so other users know who to contact for help In a work group computing environment where each person has one system the responsibilities of users privileged users and administrators are often allocated in this manner e Each person as the system owner is completely responsible for maintaining his or her own s
69. n In that case users must enter a password to view the available collections and books For more information see the IRIS InSight DynaWeb Administrator s Guide Home Page A home page is an HTML document that welcomes client users to the DynaWeb root directory on the server introduces your Web site to them and provides at least one predefined browsing choice for accessing information offered by the server DynaWeb supplies a default home page which can be replaced by another home page Publisher s Page A publisher s page is an optional HTML document that publishers can use for any purpose such as presenting forms to collect data from client users or providing a list of other sites of interest For example a publisher s page might enable readers to submit evaluations of documents or notes about improvements or upgrades 77 Chapter 8 Sharing Documentation Access and Error Logs DynaWeb supports an access log file and an error log file By default the server logs information to both files However you can turn off either or both kinds of logging You can extract statistics such as the total number of accesses the number of requests and the type of information requested CGI Scripts DynaWeb supports Common Gateway Interface CGI scripts CGI defines an interface that lets your server run scripts Some sample scripts are supplied with DynaWeb For additional information including a complete description of the Commo
70. n Gateway Interface refer to http hoohoo ncsa uiuc edu cgi Clickable Graphics DynaWeb supports hot clickable graphics that link to different destinations when you click different parts of the graphic Setting Up DynaWeb for Your Work Group 78 This section describes the considerations and overall process of setting up DynaWeb for your work group For more detailed instructions see the IRIS InSight DynaWeb Administrator s Guide DynaWeb Setup Options DynaWeb can run either as a CGI script or as a process If you are concerned about security you may wish to run DynaWeb as a CGI script piggybacked on another server utilizing the SGML to HTML and organizational capabilities of DynaWeb while retaining the extra security provided by the front end server If you set up DynaWeb to run as a process it can be set up so that it appears to users as multiple servers Each server can have a different configuration for example different collections of books or server pages in different languages Each configuration is described by a configuration file and is associated with a port number Users select the configuration they want using hypertext links or by specifying a port number in a URL Setting Up DynaWeb for Your Work Group The choices you make in setting up DynaWeb can affect the methods users employ to access books and collections The following methods can be used regardless of whether you set up DynaWeb to run as a C
71. n how busy a system is and how critical the data is A simple rule of thumb is to back up any data on the system that is irreplaceable or that someone does not want to reenter Root Filesystems On most systems the root filesystem is fairly static You do not need to back it up as frequently as the usr filesystem Changes may occur when you add software reconfigure hardware change the site networking and the system is a server or network information service NIS master workstation or change some aspect of the workstation configuration In some cases you can maintain backups only of the individual files that change for example unix etc passwd and so forth This process of backing up single files is not always simple Even a minor system change such as adding a user affects files all over the system and if you use the graphical System Manager you may tend to forget all the files that may have changed Also if you are not the only administrator at the site you may not be aware of changes made by your coworkers Using complete filesystem backup utilities such as the System Manager or bru on a regular schedule avoids these problems A reasonable approach is to back up the root partition once a month In addition to regular backups here are some specific times to back up a root filesystem e whenever you add users to the system especially if the workstation is an NIS master workstation e just before installing new software e
72. nSight book into an HTML tagged text stream If a large block of text is requested the converter dynamically builds a table of contents TOC for the text These components work together to handle requests from Web clients The server can simultaneously handle up to 256 incoming requests from Web clients Whenever a Web client requests data from a DynaWeb server the browser sends an HTTP request to the server specifying the information to be sent On receiving the request the server establishes a connection with the client and passes the data request to the DynaWeb SGML to HTML converter The information is transmitted back to the client The connections are short lived lasting only long enough for the server to process the requested data and send it to the client After sending the requested information the server terminates its connection DynaWeb Directory Structure The DynaWeb directory structure helps to isolate other parts of the filesystem from Web clients The directory usr lib Insight dweb servroot is the highest point in the DynaWeb directory tree that any Web client can access and is called the DynaWeb root directory The paths of all files accessible to Web clients are defined relative to the DynaWeb root directory In this way the root directory helps control the part of the host filesystem that is accessible to Web clients Collections of books are added to the DynaWeb directory structure by linking or copying directories
73. nclude e the availability of processing cycles across the work group e the degree to which the needs of work group users for CPU intensive processes change over the short and long term e the available bandwidth of the work group network 41 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group 42 Central to the configuration of work group application software is the licensing of that software In a work group environment licensing also offers a number of flexible options For a given application licensing can be configured centrally on a license server or it can be distributed to individual workstations This is completely separate from the issues of where the applications are stored and executed Thus the administrator has many degrees of freedom in configuring the software licensing architecture of the work group The considerations in making decisions about licensing configuration include e ease of maintenance and updating of software licenses e the variation in the number of users needing a particular application simultaneously e the licensing arrangements available from application software vendors What Is a License A software license is a collection of information that includes at least a license password and a vendor ID This information authorizes the use of a licensed software product for a period of time days or years on a particular number of systems workstations or servers at any one time The use of a license
74. nclude physical security of systems passwords protecting access to systems and resources and permissions protecting files and directories Physical Security The physical security of the systems in a work group is usually only partially the administrator s responsibility The administrator s primary role is to educate other work group members in physical security For the most part this consists of limiting access to physical systems peripherals and storage media It can also include providing individual systems and the network with protection against power surges outages and fluctuations Passwords Managing passwords is also described in IRIX Admin System Configuration and Operation A system is most secure if nobody can access the system without an account and password and if all the passwords on the system are difficult to guess and obtain Surprisingly many users choose passwords that are easy for potential intruders to guess or write their passwords down on paper and leave them near their workstations and terminals Some site administrators use the same password for multiple administrative accounts This is not a good practice Do not deliberately use the same password for more than one account More secure passwords have all of these features e They are long the first eight characters are recognized e They use multiple words that are combined or arranged in an unusual manner e They contain words from multiple langua
75. nd or by using the automount facility of NFS NFS filesystems are described in detail in the ONC3 NFS Administrator s Guide which is included with the NFS software option Maintaining Filesystems Maintaining Filesystems Mounting and Unmounting Filesystems Filesystems must be mounted in order to be accessed by IRIX The subsections below explain the use of the mount and umount commands and the file etc fstab to mount and unmount filesystems Tip You can mount and unmount XFS filesystems using the graphical user interface of the xfsm command For information see its online help Manually Mounting Filesystems The mount command is used to manually mount filesystems The basic forms of the mount command are as shown below mount device_file mount_point_directory mount host directory mount_point_directory device_file is a block device file host directory is the hostname and pathname of a remote directory that has been exported on the remote host by using the exportfs command on the remote host it requires NFS mount_point_directory is the mount point directory The mount point must already exist you can create it with the mkdir command If you omit either the device_file or the mount_point_directory from the mount command line mount checks the file etc fstab to find the missing argument For example to mount a filesystem manually use this command mount dev dsk dks0Od1ls6 usr Another example which
76. nstallation server for your work group An installation server is a server or workstation that supplies a distribution source to other systems over the network On your installation server installable software is generally kept in a distribution directory which may contain software from several distributions It is important to provide your work group with a consistent location for installable software If you provide software installation services to work group members having a consistent location makes your job easier If work group members perform their own software installations having a consistent location means they can be more self sufficient Selecting a Distribution Source When selecting a distribution source consider the speed and reliability of your network the frequency with which installations are performed and the amount of software that will be installed If disk space is available and the network is fast and reliable consider creating a centralized distribution directory on an installation server A centralized directory is particularly useful if users perform their own installations or if the availability of the server s CD ROM drive is subject to interruption When you are installing software on one or two target systems and the targets contain local CD ROM drives using a locally mounted distribution CD is often the most efficient distribution source particularly if your network is slow and you plan to install a consid
77. nt server systems and in whether those systems are dedicated to that use The overall steps in deploying a printer are as follows 1 Choose a location for the printer 2 Set up the printer itself 3 Configure the print server on the print server system 4 Configure the print server on the print clients Configuring a Network Print Server Print servers must be configured on the print server system before remote clients can configure them successfully across the network Setting Up Peripheral Devices To configure a print server for use across a network you simply make sure that the print server system is able to communicate on the network Then as superuser grant permission to each client that will use the print server Typically you grant permission to a print client with this command addclient client_nam The command for adding permission for all remote workstations to use the print server is addclient a For more information about configuring a network print server see IRIX Admin Peripheral Devices Configuring a Print Client Configuring a print client so a network print server can be used simply involves adding the network print server to the client s Print Manager You must know the hostname of the print server in order to do this It is also helpful to know the printer type for example a PostScript printer line printer plotter and so on Any printer that has been added to the Print Mana
78. nter is plugged into the power socket and the power switch is on e Does the printer have paper Frequently printers run out of paper when printing in high volume Troubleshooting Is there a paper jam Make sure the entire paper pathway is clear of sheets or fragments of paper Refer to your printer hardware documentation before attempting to put any unusual paper or other media through your printer Is the printer set to the correct baud Be sure the baud rate of the printer matches that of the serial port Is the serial cable attached correctly Often reseating the serial cable where it connects to the printer restores correct operation Is the correct cable being used The use of the pins in serial cables varies somewhat in different applications Cables designed for specific hardware may or may not function correctly with different hardware Check your system Owner s Guide and the documentation supplied with your printer and cable to determine if the cable is correct for your hardware Did you specify the right printer If your system has more than one printer and you wish to send a job to a printer other than the default remember to explicitly choose the printer you want to use Troubleshooting Tape Drives If you have difficulty accessing a tape drive use the checklist below to find the problem You can find additional troubleshooting information in the drive manufacturer s hardware manual and in IRIX Admin
79. o security of systems networks and information both administrators and users should be aware of the following 72 Anyone with physical access to a computer can simply take it or take its disk drives s The same caveat applies to backups of the system anyone with physical access to backup tapes can gain access to any information stored on them Common use accounts are a potential security hole An example of a common use account is one that is shared by all members of a department or work group Another example is a standard guest account on all the workstations at a site This allows all users at the site access to different workstations without requiring specific accounts on each workstation A pitfall of common use accounts is that you cannot tell exactly who is responsible for the actions of the account on any given workstation Another risk is that anyone trying to break into workstations at your site will try obvious account names such as guest Common use accounts can be helpful but be aware that they can pose serious security problems Needless to say common use accounts that do not have passwords are especially risky Accounts that are no longer used should be either locked or backed up and removed since unused accounts can be compromised as easily as current accounts Also change critical passwords including dialup passwords whenever anyone leaves the organization Former employees should not have access to works
80. omputing isn t just having a workstation on every desk It means using the capabilities of your Silicon Graphics systems and network to make something more than a collection of individual systems a work group system In a very real sense work group computing means that all of your workstations servers printers drives and other devices make up a single system A particular workstation might lack a CD ROM drive or start to run out of disk space during an intensive project But if any other workstation has a CD ROM or if other workstations have ample disk space available those resources are completely available because they re part of the work group system Work group computing offers power resources communication flexibility and capabilities that make each workstation much more than it could be as a standalone computer Added Capabilities A work group system has capabilities that no set of individual computers can offer Examples include centralized automatic backup of important files access to the hard disk storage on the entire work group system and access to peripheral devices no matter where they are physically connected When you use a work group system you can use the whole system not just the part of it that s on your desk Sharing Information In work group computing the information on one system can be available to other systems If one member of your work group has a report an image or a document that someone
81. p only a few files for example with tar The default tape device for any drives you may have is dev tape If you do not use the default device you must specify a device in your backup command line Label your backups If you plan to reuse the media use pencil Include the date time name of the system the name of the utility the exact command line used to make the backup so you ll remember how to extract the files later and a general indication of the contents If more than one administrator performs backups at your site include your name Verify the backup when you are finished Some utilities such as dump and bru provide explicit options to verify a backup With other programs you can simply list the contents of the archive this is usually sufficient to catch errors in the backup Write protect your media after you make the backup Note the number of times you use each tape Keep a running tally on the tape label 27 Chapter 3 Installing and Setting Up Software Overview of Software Installation Ina work group environment users typically install the software they need on their own workstations They obtain software from a central distribution source that is typically set up and maintained by the administrator The administrator makes software available for the workgroup and notifies the work group when additional software updates and patch releases become available Silicon Graphics software is dist
82. pending to each line all licenses except one Then run a licensed application If it runs its license is the uncommented one If not proceed by leaving other licenses uncommented one by one until you find the one you want To figure out which products the licenses in a license file might apply to list the installed products by issuing the versions command from a shell window Check the release notes for each product to find out which ones require licenses Installing replacement licenses You may need to install a replacement license when the original license expires when you reconfigure a system or the network in a way that changes a system identification number required by a license or when you upgrade a software product Installing a replacement license generally requires that the original license be deleted After that installing the replacement license proceeds exactly as if it were a new license Troubleshooting Concurrent Licenses If you have trouble obtaining a concurrent license for a licensed product check the following Does a license file contain a nodelocked license for the same product If so try commenting out that license Make sure there is at least one Network License Server and Global Location Broker available on the network and that a license is available for the product you want to use 51 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group e Make sure the clock on the user s system agrees with
83. ps if desired 57 Chapter 5 Identifying Your Work Group Troubleshooting 58 NIS maps contain standard types of information It is possible to store different types of information in NIS You do this by creating an ASCII file for example with a text editor containing the information you want then creating an NIS map for the file To propagate a map you created you set up a file for the new map in the domain directory of each NIS server on your network If you use only an NIS master server with no slave servers you need only store your new map in the domain directory of your NIS master server If you experience problems with NIS in your work group check the following Are all NIS clients and servers properly connected to the network Do the clients and servers have the same domain name The domain names must match exactly For example the domain widget com is not the same as the domain WIDGET com Are your NIS servers overloaded When an NIS server is overloaded the client automatically tries to switch to a more lightly loaded server If one is not available you may need to add additional NIS servers to your network Are your NIS servers running properly This will be more of an issue when in a small work group you have a single NIS server In an environment with multiple NIS servers clients automatically switch to different servers If you cannot isolate a problem after making these checks or if you need ad
84. ptional Software Products 37 Installing Patch Releases 37 Installing Software for Hardware Upgrades 37 Installing Accompanying Product Releases 37 Reinstalling the Same Software 38 Removing All Software 38 Troubleshooting Sotware Intallations 38 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group 41 Overview of Software Licensing and Administration 41 What Isa License 42 How Licensing Works 42 License Groups for Concurrent Licensing 43 Licensing Software 43 Nodelocked License Startup 43 Concurrent License Startup 44 Planning and Setting Up Your Licensing Scheme 44 Choosing Whether to Implement License Groups 45 Setting Up License Groups 45 Choosing Systems to be Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers Setting Up Global Location Brokers and Network License Servers 46 The Licensing Process 46 Maintenance 50 Troubleshooting Concurrent Licenses 51 vi Contents Identifying Your Work Group 53 About Work Group Identification 53 Introduction to NIS 53 NIS Clients and Servers 54 NIS Servers 54 NIS Maps 54 NIS Domains 54 NIS and Internet Domains 55 Setting Up NIS 56 Setting Up the NIS Master Server 56 Setting Up NIS Clients 57 Administering NIS 57 Troubleshooting 58 Peripheral Devices 59 About Peripheral Devices 59 Setting Up Peripheral Devices 59 Printers 60 Configuring a Network Print Server 60 Configuring a Print Client 61 Printer Administration 61 CD ROM Floptical and Floppy Disk Drives 62 CD ROM Filesystems 62 Flopti
85. r setting up the NIS client You must repeat these steps for each NIS client you need to set up You may choose to distribute instructions to work group members and request that they follow the NIS client setup procedure For more information about NIS client setup see the NIS Administration Guide 1 Set the domain Setting the domain on an NIS client is the same as setting the domain for the NIS master server Configure NIS on the client In most cases NIS should be set up to start automatically when the client system starts up Start NIS on the client Starting NIS on a client system is the same as starting NIS on the master server To start NIS you can reboot the client restart the network or start the NIS client software manually Typically this is done by the following command usr etc ypbind Test the NIS client To test an NIS client you typically issue the ypwhich command from a shell window If the client is functioning correctly the name of the master server for that client should be returned Administering NIS on your work group network primarily consists of keeping the information in the NIS databases current This involves these primary tasks which are covered in more detail in the NIS Administration Guide Add new users who join the work group to the NIS database Make sure new users systems are properly set up to use NIS Maintain NIS passwords for user accounts Create and propagate nonstandard ma
86. re writable only by that user This ensures that Trojan horse programs are not inserted in a user s login files A Trojan horse program is a file that appears to be a normal file but in fact causes damage when invoked by a legitimate user Safeguard and regularly check your network hardware One possible way to break into computer systems is to eavesdrop on network traffic using physical taps on the network cable Taps can be physical connections such as a vampire tap or inductive taps Run networking cable through secure areas and make sure it is easy to examine regularly Create and maintain a hard copy map of the network to make it easier to spot unauthorized taps Another way to make this sort of attack less likely is to use fiber optic FDDI network hardware which is much more difficult to tap Use only that software that is provided by reputable manufacturers Be wary of programs that are distributed publicly especially already compiled binaries Programs that are available on public bulletin board systems as opposed to BBSs run and sponsored by vendors and on public computer networks could contain malicious worm routines that can violate system security and cause data loss Chapter 8 Sharing Documentation Overview and Benefits of Sharing Documentation The documentation for your Silicon Graphics systems is available online Because the documentation is quite extensive it makes sense to stor
87. ributed on compact discs CDs A CD contains one or more software products and any special tools that the products require for installation The purpose of the installation utility inst is to transfer distribution software which has an encoded format to a hard disk in a format that is usable The installation utility offers two user interfaces a graphical interface called Software Manager and a command line interface called Inst The media containing installable software that you purchase from Silicon Graphics is referred to as a distribution Most distributions are not specific to a particular model of Silicon Graphics computer distributions ordinarily contain all versions of any hardware specific files that might be required Sometimes however a new server or personal workstation model is introduced accompanied by a special software distribution When this occurs subsequent distributions are fully compatible with the new model Software Product A software product is a collection of files that support either a system function or a specific application Some products support critical functions and must be installed if the system is to operate other products are not critical but optimize system operation and are recommended for installation by the manufacturer A subset of required and recommended products is installed in servers and workstations before they leave the factory 29 Chapter 3 Installing and Setting Up Software
88. ron command to back up the usr src hierarchy to dev tape tape drive every morning at 03 00 using bru 03 usr sbin bru c f dev tape usr src Place this line in a crontabs file such as var spool cron crontabs root This sort of command is useful as a safety net but you should not rely solely on automatic backups There is no substitute for having a person monitor the backup process from start to finish and properly archive and label the media when the backup is finished For more information on using cron to perform jobs automatically see IRIX Admin System Configuration and Operation Backup Strategies Storing Backups Store your backup tapes carefully Even if you create backups on more durable media such as optical disks take care not to abuse them Set the write protect switch on tapes you plan to store as soon as a tape is written but remember to unset it when you are ready to overwrite a previously used tape Do not subject backups to extremes of temperature and humidity and keep tapes away from strong electromagnetic fields If there are a large number of workstations at your site you may wish to devote a special room to storing backups Store magnetic tapes including 1 4 and 8 mm cartridges upright Do not store tapes on their sides as this can deform the tape material and cause the tapes to read incorrectly Make sure the media is clearly labeled and if applicable write protected Choose a label
89. s directory and uses the same name as defined in the server configuration file Note An unavailable icon causes no problem for the server A client displays a browser specific icon instead of the correct server icon Make sure the gif file for the icon exists and is not corrupted 81 Chapter 8 Sharing Documentation 82 The server cannot find an icon after you change its name in the configuration file Make sure the values of resource parameters contain a leading slash for example icons button_up gif Users cannot find the button bar If the button bar is at the bottom and the returned information is longer than the document view users must scroll downward before the button bar appears In the middle of a block of text the button bar is out of view at either the top or bottom of the text A bookshelf is missing or a removed bookshelf or book still appears Make sure you restarted the DynaWeb server after adding or removing a book or collection A user complains that the server is acting weirdly Verify whether the user is specifying either of the following parameters in URLs DWEB_NAVHINTS or DWEB_REDIRECT The server uses these parameters to pass state information to itself Setting them in a URL causes the server to behave in unpredictable ways Authentication After you supply your ID and password and they have been validated by the server when you switch books collections or other documents you are aga
90. t doing so You can keep the weekly tapes for a few months You should keep the monthly tapes for about one year before recycling them Backing Up Files Across a Network If you are managing a site with many networked workstations you may wish to save backups on a device located on a central workstation 23 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 24 To back up across a network use the same basic backup commands but with a slight change Enter o system_name dev tape If required specify an account on the remote device o user system_name dev tape Users can use a central tape drive from their workstations with this method Note that if you are backing up to a remote tape drive on a workstation that is not made by Silicon Graphics the device name dev tape may not be the correct name for the tape drive Always learn the pathname of the tape device before executing the backup commands For example tar cvf guest alice dev tape bus schedule or o echo bus schedule cpio ovcO guest alice dev tape Automatic Backups You can use the cron utility to automatically back up filesystems at predetermined times The backup media must be already mounted in the drive and if you want this to be truly automatic it should have enough capacity to store all the data being backed up ona single piece of media If all the data doesn t fit then someone must manually change backup media Here is an example c
91. tations at the site Security Checklists Systems with dialup ports should have special dialup accounts and passwords This is very important for sites that have common use accounts as discussed above Even with this added precaution do not store sensitive data on workstations that have dial up access If your site allows access to the Internet network for example using ftp take precautions to isolate access to a specific gateway workstation Discourage use of the su command unless absolutely necessary The su command allows a user to change his or her user ID to that of another user It is sometimes legitimately necessary to use su to access information owned by another user but this presents an obvious temptation the person using su to switch user IDs must know another person s password and therefore has full access to his or her account Note The file var adm sulog contains a log of all successful and unsuccessful attempts to use the su command if it is enabled in etc default su Be sure that system directories such as root bin usr bin and etc and the files in them are not writable except by the owner If you must leave your console workstation or terminal unattended log off the system This is especially important if you are logged in as root Also refer to the xlock reference page for information on locking your local X display Sensitive data files should be encrypted The crypt command together with
92. tems and Files Filesystem Names Filesystems don t have names per se they are identified by their location on a disk or their position in the directory structure in these ways e by the block and character device filenames of the disk partition or logical volume that contains the filesystem e by a mnemonic name for the disk partition or logical volume that contains the filesystem e by the mount point for the filesystem The filesystem identifier from the list above that you use with commands that administer filesystems such as mkfs mount umount and fsck depends upon the command See the reference page for the command you want to use or examples in this guide to determine which filesystem name to use Setting Up Shared Filesystems 16 Network File Systems NFS NFS filesystems are available if you are using the optional NFS software NFS filesystems are exported from one host and mounted on other hosts across a network The capabilities of NFS filesystems meet the needs of many work groups and are often used in work group computing environments On the hosts where the filesystems reside they are treated just like any other filesystem for example the Extent File System EFS or XFS The only special feature of these filesystems is that they can be exported and mounted on other workstations Exporting NFS filesystems is done with the exportfs command On other hosts these filesystems are mounted with the mount comma
93. to the usr lib Insight dweb servroot directory Overview and Benefits of Sharing Documentation Collections A DynaWeb collection is an IRIS InSight bookshelf containing one or more InSight books that a DynaWeb server offers to Web clients Each collection is a directory in the DynaWeb root directory and each book in a collection is a subdirectory of the collection directory Collections are added to the DynaWeb root directory in three ways e Each time the DynaWeb server is started it creates links if they don t already exist from the servroot directory to directories that contain InSight books e You can create symbolic links from the DynaWeb root directory to a collection directory e You can copy a collection to the DynaWeb root directory InSight book collections are automatically made available to the DynaWeb server by means of symbolic links in the DynaWeb root directory Using symbolic links in this way simplifies book maintenance and DynaWeb upgrades Because the DynaWeb server collects information about available collections and books only when it starts up changes to the collections and books that happen while the server is running are not displayed to client users When collections are added books are added or books are removed the DynaWeb server must be restarted so that it displays the available collections and books You can limit access to the documentation server by setting up DynaWeb to use HTTP authenticatio
94. two forms to unmount local filesystems and the first and third forms to unmount remote filesystems oe umount mount_point_directory umount device_file umount host directory oe oe For example to unmount a local or remote filesystem mounted at d2 enter this command umount d2 To unmount the filesystem on the partition dev dsk dksOd1s7 enter this command umount dev dsk dks0d1s7 Administration Considerations To unmount the remote mounted NFS filesystem depot usr spool news enter this command umount depot usr spool news To be unmounted a filesystem must not be in use If it is in use and you try to unmount it you get a Resource busy message These messages and their solutions are explained in the umount reference page Administration Considerations To administer filesystems you need to do the following e Monitor the amount of free space and free inodes available e Ifa filesystem is chronically short of free space take steps to alleviate the problem such as removing old files and imposing disk usage quotas e If you use EFS filesystems use fsck periodically to check the filesystems for data integrity XFS filesystems are checked with xfs_check only when a problem is suspected e Back up filesystems You can perform many of these functions automatically by using shell scripts Many shell scripts are installed on your system by default For more information examine the scripts
95. ty in a work group environment Security is up to both administrators and users it starts with your own local system Once you have initially established the security of a system you can expand your secure area to include the network But until you have local security there is no point in trying to establish security over a larger area The most important concept in security is that security is a dynamic process requiring that you understand the issues keep up to date on them and continually monitor your system and work group Each individual in the work group must be aware of security and take steps to maintain it Your responsibility as an administrator is to establish a security policy and begin its implementation A great strength of the IRIX system is the ease with which users can share files and data However some of the security guidelines presented in this chapter are at odds with easy system access It is up to the system administrator to balance the needs and concerns of the user community There are three levels at which security must be established individual systems the local network and a site connected to external networks such as the Internet This chapter deals primarily with taking steps to secure an isolated system but many of these same steps must also be taken before undertaking the more ambitious job of securing a network 67 Chapter 7 Security Components of Security 68 The components of security i
96. u should develop a regimen for backing up the system or systems at your site and follow it closely That way you can accurately assess which data you can and cannot recover in the event of a mishap Exactly how you perform backups depends upon your workstation configuration and other factors Regardless of the strategy you choose though you should always keep at least two full sets of reasonably current backups You should also encourage users to make their own backups particularly of critical rapidly changing files Users needs can change overnight and they know best the value of their data Workstation users can back up important files using the System Manager found in the System toolchest on your screen The System Manager is described in detail in the Personal System Administration Guide Make sure users have access to an adequate supply of media for example cartridge tapes whether new or used If your media can handle your largest filesystem with a single volume you don t have to use an incremental backup scheme though such a system reduces the amount of time you spend making backups However if you must regularly use multiple volumes to back up your filesystems then an incremental backup system reduces the number of tapes you use The following sections discuss the different aspects of backing up data 21 Chapter 2 Filesystems and Files 22 When and What to Back Up How often you back up your data depends upo
97. ve relationships to one another A server is a process that provides some kind of service for example a database of the names of all of the machines on the network A client is a process that makes use of a service for example by enabling a user to find a machine on the network A server generally provides services to many clients Both a client process and a server process can take place on the same machine or on different machines It doesn t matter which and in fact you often can t even tell Users and Administrators Work Group computing also makes a distinction between users and administrators This is a distinction in roles not a distinction of people As a member of your work group most of the time your role is that of a user You may be authoring content using information communicating editing or what have you User roles involve activities in which the computing systems you use are tools means to an end Sometimes however you will take an administrative role When you re backing up your files setting up a password or configuring a piece of software you re an administrator even if just for a Work Group Computing Administration few minutes Administrator roles involve activities in which the computing systems are the objects of your attention Everyone in a work group is an administrator some of the time and shares responsibility for some portion of the administration of the system With power comes responsib
98. ware Installations 38 If you encounter problems while installing software use the following checklist to identify the cause More information about troubleshooting software installations can be found in IRIX Admin Software Installation and Licensing e If you received an error message what type of error was it There are generally three types of errors in installations fatal caused by hardware failures or lack of operating system resources error caused by a command that was unable to execute and warning caused by a condition that might cause problems later Each error message should be accompanied by additional descriptive information Troubleshooting Software Installations Did the error message refer to an installation conflict Installation conflicts occur when there are unsatisfied product dependencies or when incompatible product are selected for installation Conflicts can arise because an installed product depends on another product that is not installed a required subsystem is not marked for installation or two products are incompatible In resolving conflicts you will often need to make changes in the software you choose to install In some cases you may need to obtain additional required software 39 Chapter 4 Software Licenses for Your Work Group Overview of Software Licensing and Administration Software licensing and administration are primarily concerns of the administrator Users do not
99. ystem That person is both a privileged user and the administrator for that system Usually the person performs administrative tasks while logged in to a personal account But when the IRIX shell with administrative privileges is needed the person logs out and logs back in to the root account e The system owner logs in as a privileged user in order to add login accounts for other people who occasionally need to use the system If one of these users ever needs to perform administrative tasks the system owner adds privileges to the account to make that user a privileged user For environments in which one person uses a particular system much more frequently than anyone else where the person is essentially the system s owner you can designate that person as the primary user The primary user does not necessarily have any special access privileges but the person s name appears along with the administrator s name in the system s System Manager window so other users know who uses the system regularly There is only one primary user per system Work Group Computing Administration Note The System Setup tool supports the model where one person has one system that he or she must maintain When you create a login account for a person using this tool it designates that person as the primary user and also makes the person a privileged user If necessary you can later use the User Manager to remove administrative privileges or assign the tit

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