q-Status Installation

Updated 13 July 2006

© 2006  LogiQwest, Inc. All rights reserved.

q-Status Logo

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Index

Introduction

Installation

Custom Setup

Apache Server

SSH Xfer

FTP Xfer

NFS Xfer

Group Management

Complex Servers

Sun Fire Config

Baseline Comparison

Golden Comparison

Customization
q-Status™ Installation

q-Status™ Installation Overview

There are six steps to install q-Status™:

  1. Establish a Web Server that supports executable perl cgi-bin scripts
  2. Place the q-Status™ directory and files under the htdocs/ file system of your Web Server for viewing. At this point q-Status™ can be run in demo mode for reading the q-Status™ program html files (e.g. http://localhost/q-Status/index.html. See Sample Run Included below.
  3. q-Status is package as q-Status2.0X/. This directory should be renamed to q-Status/.
  4. Establish an NFS mount directory accessible from the systems being monitored on the Web Server for writing the data to be collected.You can also use a more secure FTP or SSH process to transfer data with a script provided. See "Using Alternate FTP File Transfer Script" or "Using Alternate SSH File Tranfer Script".
  5. Install q-Status™ bin/ directory script, make executable, update the CFGDIR file to assigned the location of the scripts, and setup directory structure (e.g. bin, data) on the NFS shared filesystem. Note that patchdiag is configured to require the CFGDIR file in the bin/ directory to be configured properly.
  6. Add crontab entries to hosts/domains that are to be monitored.

Additional Configuration Notes:

q-Status™ can monitor configurations of any Solaris system including Sun Fire, Sun Fire midrange and Start Cat multi-domain complex servers. q-Status™ supports both Veritas and Sun Volume Manager layouts. T3 Disk Configuration is also supported in this latest revision. The GUI for q-Status™ is started from the index.html in the q-Status/ directory which provides documentation links if the CGI program is not running.

The GUI is context sensitive and will display options only if the data collected supports it. For example, the Complex Server option that appears on the q-Status™ side bar will only appear is you have Sun Fire SC controlled or Sun Fire ssp data collected. Under the Storage section, Veritas or Sun Volume Manager options are only displayed if these programs are installed on the servers.

As part of the final cleanup, the q-Status™ program should be started by the user directly through its main cgi:

q-Status/CGI/q-StatusGUI.cgi

The index.html file is only indented for initial installation to display the cgi program without execution enabled in the web server.

cgi-bin Capability Web server

To establish an executable perl cgi-bin web server, refer to the following HTML pages:

If you wish to protect the directory with a password, refer to this Web Page:

This may be important to protect the administrative directory.

Installing q-Status™ from the Tar Gzip File

Obtain the tar-gzip file of the latest q-Status™ program. Use gzip -d to uncompress the file, then by extract the files with tar xvf. For a new installation, place the created directory file structure in the web server's /var/apache/htdocs/ directory:

# cd /var/apache/htdocs
# /usr/bin/gzip -d q-Status3.12.tar.gz
# tar xvf q-Status3.11.tar
# mv q-Status3.11 q-Status

q-Status™ is shipped with the revision in the tar file name (e.g. q-Status2.03.tar.gz). After the file is untarred, the directory should be renamed to q-Status/ dropping the revision name.

Upgrading q-Status™ from the Tar Gzip File

Updating q-Status™ can easily accomplished by rename the old version to a saved name (e.g. q-Status.SAVE) and then installing the new q-Status™ version as discussed above.

After the new version is installed, remove the data/ and data_baseline/ demo directories from the new version. Copy the old data/ and data_baseline/ directories from the previous version to the new version of q-Status™.

Note: Upgrading q-Status™ software by renaming directories will require re-shareing the NFS even though they are the same names. This is accomplished by stopping and starting NFS with:

/etc/init.d/nfs.server [stop/start]

The previous q-Status™ Custom directory is self contained and should work with no changes. But new version of q-Status™ may have library changes that need to be integrated into any custom module.

You will need to reconfigure the bin/CFGDIR file as discussed in the remaining sections. You will also need to update any FTP or SSH transfer method with the pkgadd module or the patchdiag.xref FTPobtainXREF scripts and FTP or SSH receive scripts. Check the replaced Goodies/ directory. Any custom developed q-Status™ function must then be moved from the old version to the new version in the Custom/ directory and upgraded if necessary.

q-Status™ Solaris Conversion Issues.

q-Status™ Solaris is a new database structure and may require some conversion to use. This is particularly true in retained baseline data. q-Status™ Solaris is provide with a shell script for this conversion called create_rename_pkg-long_files.pl.

q-Status™ Solaris no longer uses data files with suffix ".pkginfo-long". These have been replaced with suffix files of just ".pkginfo". The new suffix files are same data but with a renamed filename. The new q-Status™ Solaris program will not recognize a file with "pkginfo-long".

To fix the retained baseline data, use the create_rename_pkg-long_files.pl Perl script located in the q-Status/Goodies directory to create an execute file to rename the retained baseline files. To update the baseline entries follow these step:

  • Place the create_rename_pkg-long_files.pl Perl script in the data_baseline directory.
  • Execute the create_rename_pkg-long_files.pl Perl script. This will create a file called rename_pkg-long_files.sh. This is a shell script that will perform the renaming.
  • Execute rename_pkg-long_files.sh shell script.
  • Delete both the create_rename_pkg-long_files.pl Perl script and the rename_pkg-long_files.sh shell script from the data_baseline directory.

Upgrading q-Status™ from a Patch File

From time to time, q-Status™ patches are made available for a current revision (e.g., 2.0n). These patches are installed with a script file and perform simple replacement of components. These patches are available as part of q-Status™ maintenance.

Sample Run Included

q-Status™ comes with sample files and a predefined setup to execute after it is installed on a web server. You can run this sample by simply accessing any of the q-Status™ GUI through the web server (e.g. http://localhost/q-Status/index.html).

The cgi programs (located in the CGI/ directory of q-Status™) will read and process the example data from the data/ directory of q-Status™. Use this to validate that the Web portion of q-Status™ is working and for demonstration purposes.

Proceed to Configuring q-Status™ to Collect Client Data to continue with installation.