Chapter 4. Installation Overview
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## Chapter 4. Installation Overview

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.

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(8)` utility on IRIX systems and the `rpm(8)` utility on Linux systems and the `dmmaint(8)` utility.

## Preparing for Installation

Beginning with DMF release 2.7, the installable DMF package includes a server software subsystem and a client software subsystem. The server software subsystem provides the full set of DMF functionality, including the DMF daemon, MSPs, LSs, DMF user and administrator commands, DMF online manuals, and all DMF man pages. The client software subsystem provides the executable files, libraries, and the subset of man pages that allow a machine to be a DMF client. This subsystem allows users on the client to use the DMF distributed commands. Only one of these subsystems can be installed on a machine.

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 or Linux and the XFS/CXFS file system for passing file management requests between the kernel and DMF. Ensure that you have installed DMAPI and the appropriate patches on the DMF server, as listed in the files displayed by the Dependencies and News buttons on the `dmmaint(8)` display.

  | Caution: For file systems to be managed by DMF, they must be mounted on the DMF server to enable the DMAPI interface. On IRIX systems, you can do this by using the `mount -o dmi` command or by declaring parameter 4 in the `fstab` entry to be `dmi`. On Linux systems, you can do this by using the `mount -o dmapi -o mtpt = mountpoint` command or by adding `dmapi, mtpt = mountpoint` to the fourth field in the `fstab` entry. For more information on the `mount` or `fstab` commands, see the man pages. Failure to enable DMAPI for DMF-managed file systems will result in a configuration error.

- 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 on IRIX systems and the `mkfs.xfs` command on Linux systems. 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.

When you have completed the installation, you must configure DMF on the server prior to using it. See the DMF Administrator's Guide for information on configuring DMF.

## DMF Directory Structure

Beginning with DMF 2.8, DMF no longer supports multiple installed versions of DMF that can be made active via the `dmmaint(8)` program. While it is not necessary to delete any existing pre-2.8 versions of DMF, they will not accessible by the DMF 2.8 software and they can be removed at the convenience of the administrator.

The reason for this change is that the pre-2.8 DMF directory hierarchy of `/usr/dmf/dmbase` is no longer the target installation directory of DMF. Rather, DMF 2.8 and later binaries, libraries, header files, and man pages are installed directly into the proper system locations and they are accessed directly from those locations without the use of symbolic file links.

When DMF 2.8 or later is installed, if the symbolic file link `/etc/dmf/dmbase` exists, it will be deleted. This link was used in pre-2.8 versions of DMF to access the “active” version of DMF, and as such, it was part of the administrators' initialization procedure to add this link to their `PATH` environment variable. Since it is no longer used in DMF 2.8 and later versions, it could cause an incorrect copy of a DMF command to be executed if an administrator's path included the link to be searched before the normal system binary locations. This way, even if the administrator neglects to remove the link from the path, it should not make any difference.

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Chapter 3. Release Package |  | Chapter 5. Installing DMF on IRIX Systems