Installation is the second of four steps necessary to the successful implementation of DMF at a site:
Planning
Installation
Configuration
Initialization
The planning, configuration, and initialization steps, as well as daily operation, are described in the DMF Administrator's Guide for IRIX.
The procedures described in this document are used for the installation of major releases, revisions, and product upgrades delivered on the release media.
All installation steps are initiated through the SGI inst utility and the dmmaint utility.
Before beginning the installation of DMF, ensure that you meet the following requirements:
You must be root
The Data Management API (DMAPI) is the mechanism within IRIX and the XFS file system for passing file management requests between the kernel and DMF. Ensure that you have installed DMAPI and the appropriate patches as listed in the files displayed by the Dependencies and News buttons on the dmmaint(8) display.
![]() | Caution: In order for file systems to be managed by DMF, they must be mounted to enable the DMAPI interface. You can do this by using the mount -o dmi command or by declaring parameter 4 in the fstab entry to be dmi. (refer to the man pages for mount or fstab). Failure to enable dmi for DMF-managed file systems will result in a configuration error. |
DMF uses a set of path names in which it stores databases, log and journal files, and temporary files. These file systems have a set of requirements about which you may want to know before installation:
HOME_DIR, the base path name for DMF directories in which databases reside, must be a separate root file system.
JOURNAL_DIR, the base path name for DMF directories in which the daemon and tape MSP database journal files reside, must be a separate file system on a different disk from HOME_DIR.
SPOOL_DIR, the base path name used to construct the directory names for DMF directories in which DMF log files reside, must be a separate file system.
TMP_DIR, the base path name used to construct the directory names for DMF directories in which DMF puts temporary files such as pipes, should exist, but does not necessarily need to be a separate file system.
MOVE_FS, the base path name for the scratch file system used to move files between MSPs, has requirements only if you configure more than one MSP. If you have more than one MSP, MOVE_FS must be a separate root file system, and it must be mounted to enable the DMAPI interface.
All of these configuration requirements are checked by the dmcheck(8) command.
DMF state information is kept within a file system structure called an extended attribute. Extended attributes can be either inside the inode or in attribute blocks associated with the inode. DMF runs much faster when the extended attribute is inside the inode, because this minimizes the number of disk references that are required to determine DMF information. In certain circumstances, there can be a large performance difference between inode-resident extended attribute and non-resident extended attribute.
You should configure your file systems to ensure that the extended attribute is always inode-resident. This is done with the mkfs_xfs command. Declare the inode size to be 512 bytes using the -i size=512 option. File systems that already exist will have to be dumped, recreated, and restored. This change is not mandatory.
Ensure that, in the operating system configuration file, the following IPC kernel configuration parameters are set equal to or greater than the default: MSGMAX, MSGMNI, MSGSEG, and MSGSSZ. The parameters are described in Appendix A of IRIX Admin: System Configuration and Operation, SGI publication 007-2859.
DMF man pages are installed into /usr/dmf/dmbase/version/man. Ensure that you and all DMF users add the correct path to the MANPATH environment variable as described in Chapter 8, “Before You Start DMF”.
When you have completed the installation, you must configure DMF prior to using it. See the DMF Administrator's Guide for IRIX for information on configuring DMF.
The following diagram shows the DMF directory structure:
There is more than one version directory if you upgrade DMF from a previous release. When you use the dmmaint(8) utility, you will activate the most recent version and configure it.
The News and Readme files are displayed by the News and Dependencies buttons on the dmmaint(8) display.