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RealityV15.1Online Documentation (MoTW) Revision 7
Set-up before Installation (UNIX Installation Guide) (M6847IG+Before.htm)
When you purchase your hardware from Northgate Public Services (NPS), the system is configured for Reality according to your requirements; for example, the number of users and the resilience options will be defined. If you purchase your hardware from an alternative vendor, you need to carry out the procedures described in this section.
This section gives some details of the requirements of UNIX to support the Reality product. It does not, however, deal with the performance related configuration parameters of UNIX.
Important Note:
Please review these Installation Guide notes carefully before you attempt any installation or upgrades. If you are in any doubt contact your support representative or Northgate directly.
Always make notes covering exactly what you do, step by step, during an installation or upgrade.
If you find any issues with guidance, or ways to improve it, please feed this back by using the "Comment on this topic" links in the Online Documentation. This will help all Reality users with future upgrades.
On the host system there must be a user-id called realman (Reality manager). If one is not present, the system administrator should create one. The Reality software will be installed in the realman user’s home directory, so it must be on a partition with at least 250 Mbytes of free space.
A soft link to the realman home directory must be set up in /usr by the administrator:
ln -s /filesystem/realman /usr/realman
where filesystem is the partition holding the realman home directory. Root privileges are required to set up this link.
The host system must also have a user-id called rosi. This must have a home directory on a partition with at least 25 Mbytes of free space.
Note: On Linux systems, ‘group’ and ‘other’ need read, write, and execute permissions to be set up on the home directories for the realman and rosi user-ids, except that on CentOS 6.3 systems the ‘other’ group does not exist and is not used.
Reality requires tape device drivers to have certain characteristics for successful operation. The name of the device driver is not important, because Reality cross references the device number as used in the ASSIGN statement with the UNIX device name as detailed in Configuring a Database. The characteristics required are that the device needs to be a no-rewind device and to run the Berkeley tape driver (if available). Some examples are:
Solaris - /dev/rmt/0mbn
AIX - /dev/rmt0.1
Linux - /dev/nst0
Users’ Reference: Administration gives more detailed examples.
Reality uses the UNIX terminal independence mechanism, terminfo. A set of terminfo definitions for use with NPS PRISM terminals is supplied on the NPS Customisation CD.
Check that the file /etc/hosts includes an entry for the local system; that is, an entry that specifies the IP address of the system with the name returned by the command uname –n. On Linux systems, the host name must be fully qualified. For example:
152.114.226.12 aharries1 aharries1.northgate-is.com
The NPS Solaris Customisation CD configures Solaris to run Reality. After running the configuration program, you will need to build a new kernel by rebooting the system.
Reality uses shared memory to exchange data between processes and to cache common data used by many processes. Solaris systems default to a small limit on shared memory and this limit will need to be raised in order to run a Reality database. The actual amount of shared memory required is dependant on the number of users and the size of the application. A good starting point is to set the shared memory limit to 16 Mbytes (you can make this change by using the NPS Solaris Customisation CD).
On Solaris, if you are going to install UNIX-Connect and you also want to use any OSI transport services or X.25, you must install these first.
The NPS AIX customisation program configures AIX to run Reality. You will also need to configure the system as described below.
On AIX installations, the file system on which Reality will be installed (typically under /usr/realman) must not have the ‘nosuid’ mount option set. You can use the smit utility to change the characteristics of the file system concerned.
On AIX, if you have no licensed complier and debugger, those on the AIX Tools CD can be used. Refer to the README file in the base directory on AIX Tools CD for more information.
No customisation program is available for Linux. Configure the system as follows.
On Linux, the Korn shell needed by Reality is not installed by default. It can be loaded as follows:
On Linux, by default only root can access tape devices. To make them available to all users, change the permissions for the relevant device nodes (use chmod 666 deviceNode).
Remote user access to a Reality database uses incoming telnet. On Red Hat Linux, only outgoing telnet is configured. Incoming telnet can be enabled from the KDE Desktop by using KDE Control Panel/Services Configuration and selecting telnet.
For transaction handling and rapid recovery, you will need a raw log, but no clean logs. It is recommended that this is held on a separate disk in its own partition. Alternatively, you can use a file as the raw log - this must be created after you install Reality.
For transaction logging, shadow database and FailSafe, you will need a single raw log, used by all databases on the system, plus a clean log directory for each database. It is recommended that you allocate a separate disk for these logs, with one partition for the raw log and a second for the clean logs. Using a file as a raw log is not recommended for transaction logging and shadow database.
Note: Linux does not support raw disk access. For the raw log, use a block mode partition or a file instead.
The disk used for the raw and clean logs must be configured as follows:
There must be no swap partitions - if there are any, they should be disabled and their use prevented in the future.
There must be no virtual partitions. If there are any, they should be unmounted, disabled and their use prevented in the future.
There must be no existing user file systems.
Carry out the following steps to create raw log and clean log partitions.
Check all partitions defined for the disk and ensure they are freed off as above.
Repartition the disk to define raw log and clean log partitions. There are no restrictions on the sizes of these partitions.
Caution
You should be extremely careful to name the partitions correctly; otherwise, another valid file system may be corrupted.
Make the mount point for the clean log file system.
Set general read/write permissions.