Installation Guide

Installation Procedures

Overview

The Almond Doubler for UNIX program is distributed on diskette or on a multi-platform CD-ROM and is installed using the standard UNIX tar utility for reading archived files. You must either have super user privileges to carry out the installation, or get help from your system administrator.

Once the appropriate contents of the diskette or CD-ROM have been unloaded onto your system, an installation script prompts you for information it needs to configure The Almond Doubler. The prompts are of the form:

Do you want to accept this option? (n/Y)

The default is always the last option and is capitalized. To select the default, press Enter. To select a different option, type that letter and press Enter. A brief discussion of each step in the installation (and configuration) procedure is included in the detailed installation instructions following this section.

The Almond Doubler for UNIX will be installed by default in a sub-directory name doubler under your home directory, unless you specify differently during the installation procedure. A directory named .doubler will be created at the top level (mount point) of each UFS file system on your system. This directory holds the compressed data files database for each file system.

Once you have performed the initial installation and performed any parameter configuration for your site that you may desire, all features of The Almond Doubler for UNIX are available for use.

Your Almond Doubler for UNIX license is for multiple users on a single computer system and you will be prompted during the installation procedure to contact AlmondSeed Software Inc. for an authorization password. The password is specific to the serial number on your Almond Doubler software and your system host name and it must be obtained before your software will execute on your computer system.

Detailed Installation Instructions

The installation procedures given below assume you are installing The Almond Doubler for UNIX for the first time. If you have previously installed and removed the software, the messages displayed may be slightly different.

It takes approximately 10 minutes to install and configure The Almond Doubler for UNIX.

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FROM DISKETTE (SOLARIS VERSION ONLY):

1. Insert the enclosed diskette into your 3.5" floppy disk drive. Type the command

volcheck

to register the diskette with the volume management daemon. Note that The Almond Doubler distribution diskette is in tar format, so you may be prompted by the volume manager that the diskette is unformatted. DO NOT FORMAT the diskette. Press the "cancel" button to accept the diskette "as is" and dismiss any volcheck dialog boxes that may appear.

2. Make sure your are in the home directory where you want to install The Almond Doubler under (use the pwd command if necessary).

3. Extract The Almond Doubler files onto your hard disk using the tar command. To begin, type:

tar -xf [device name]

where [device name] is the name of your floppy disk drive, e.g. /vol/dev/aliases/floppy0 for Solaris 2.x. Two files should be extracted; alunwrap and shrink.rap.

4. Uncompress the product compressed archive by typing

./alunwrap ./shrink.rap

You should now see a third file called doubler.tar in your home directory.

5. Extract The Almond Doubler's Installation Script by typing

tar xvf ./doubler.tar doubler_install

6. Run the Installation Script by typing

./doubler_install

Remember to specify full path names for the installation tar device (e.g. /export/home/user_directory/doubler.tar) and the installation target directory (e.g. /export/home/user_directory).

7. The Almond Doubler for UNIX requires an authorization password to run. To obtain your authorization password, contact AlmondSeed Software, Inc. by telephone, fax or e-mail and provide us with the following information:

• Your name

• The name of your organization

• Your telephone number

• The six digit serial number off of your Almond Doubler program disk or carton

• The unique host name of your computer system (obtained via the uname -a command)

If you want to obtain your password and enter it at this time, press Enter and enter the requested information at the prompts. Otherwise, press n and Enter to continue with the installation. You can enter or re-enter your password at any time by running the ad_password command in the .doubler directory.

NOTE: The password you receive may contain both upper and lower case characters and is case sensitive. It must be typed in exactly as given in order to unlock your software.

8. After the installation process has been completed, make sure that you have properly set your environment variables (DOUBLER_HOME, PATH, etc.). The necessary environment variable changes have been added to the root .profile or .cshrc files. You can effect the changes by logging out and logging back in again as root or by using the "dot" command "." on /.profile in sh or ksh or the source command on /.cshrc in csh.

9. Before starting The Almond Doubler, please review the release notes contained in the file README in the .doubler sub-directory.

10. IMPORTANT! Make sure that you edit the doubler.conf file in the .doubler sub-directory to exclude any directories and files that you do NOT want to have automatically compressed, such as directories containing system files, etc.. We recommend that you make backup copies of any critical data files before running The Almond Doubler.

11. Start The Almond Doubler by typing

./Doubler

at the command prompt. You should see the Motif GUI appear on screen. The menu options are discussed in greater detail in the following chapters. Before pressing the Start Doubler button, see the note below on Post-Installation Configuration. When you press the Start Doubler button, the scan and rebuild process will take several minutes, depending on your disk size. Please be patient.

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FROM CD-ROM:

1. Log in to the system, make sure your are in your home directory (use the pwd command if necessary) and insert The Almond Doubler for UNIX distribution CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive. If your operating system does not automatically mount new CD-ROMs, manually mount the CD-ROM file system.

2. The Almond Doubler files will be unloaded onto your hard disk using the tar command. To begin, type:

tar -xf [device name] ./doubler_install

where [device name] is the name of the appropriate platform version of The Almond Doubler on your system's CD-ROM drive, e.g. /cdrom/SOLARIS.ADU for Solaris 2.x installations (See the CD-ROM Installation Notes for specific names for other supported platforms). Press Enter to begin the installation.

3. When the command line prompt returns, type:

./doubler_install

and press Enter to continue the installation of The Almond Doubler.

4. The installation script will give you an introductory message and then provide a default name of the device name to unload the software from. You should enter the same device name (CD-ROM drive plus desired version) as you did in step 2.

5. You will then choose which directory to install The Almond Doubler into. The default directory will be the doubler sub-directory under your home directory. You can either select this default by pressing Enter or type n and then enter your desired path name at the prompt.

6. The installation script will copy The Almond Doubler files off the CD-ROM and install them in your selected directory.

• Your name

• The name of your organization

• Your telephone number

• The six digit serial number off of your Almond Doubler program disk or carton

• The unique host name of your computer system (obtained via the uname -a command)

NOTE: The password you receive may contain both upper and lower case characters and is case sensitive. It must be typed in exactly as given in order to unlock your software.

9. Before starting The Almond Doubler, please review the release notes contained in the file README in the .doubler sub-directory.

11. Start The Almond Doubler by typing

./Doubler

Notes on Post-Installation Configuration

Before starting The Almond Doubler, you can either start the Doubler Motif-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) and configure the software using the on-screen options or edit the doubler.conf file in the .doubler sub-directory using your favorite text editor. This will allow you to exclude any directories and files that you do NOT want to have automatically compressed, such as directories containing system files, etc. In addition, you can also specify how old files must be before they are automatically compressed, and minimum and maximum sizes for files that can be compressed, as well as minimum acceptable compression savings. These configuration options and how to set them are discussed in more detail in the following chapter on Automatic Compression and Decompression.

The Main GUI Window

After starting The Almond Doubler, you will see a Motif-based Graphical User Interface window appear on-screen, as shown below. The menu interface is used for controlling various aspects of how files will be automatically or manually compressed or decompressed, or will behave during backup operations, as discussed in more detail in the following chapters.

In addition, the main window provides several pieces of useful information:

• The total number of files which are compressed on the system

• The original (uncompressed) size of these files, in megabytes

• The current (compressed) size of these files, in megabytes

• The space savings due to compression, in megabytes

• The savings expressed as a percentage of the total original size

• The overall compression ratio achieved for the compressed files

At the bottom of the window, two buttons appear that enable you to start and stop The Almond Doubler compression and decompression daemons. Depending on the current state of these daemons, either the Start Doubler or Stop Doubler button will be grayed out (only one button is active at any given time).

Starting Automatically After Rebooting

System Administrators should consider how they want The Almond Doubler to behave in the event of a system reboot. The default behavior is that both the automatic file decompression facility and automatic file compression daemon will need to be manually restarted by a System Administrator (or other user with root privileges).

If you would like to have The Almond Doubler automatic decompression facility restart upon system reboot, you need to create a startup script file and place it in the /etc/rc2.d directory. This is the directory which starts NFS and NFS-related processes in multi-user mode.

There is a naming convention used by Solaris when executing restart scripts. The Almond Doubler restart script should be named SxxDoubler, where "xx" is a number between 00 and 99 which indicates the order in which this script is executed relative to other scripts in the rc2.d directory. We recommend that you make "xx" a relatively high number, so that it is executed after the automount and volume management restart scripts. For further information read the README file in the /etc/init.d directory.

The contents of the script should be a single line which executes (in background mode) the Almond Doubler NFS daemon. The script needs to reference the directory in which The Almond Doubler was installed. A sample script is shown below and can also be found in the file $DOUBLER_HOME/.doubler/S97Doubler.

#
# Almond Doubler startup script
#
$DOUBLER_HOME/dblrd &
#
#end of Almond Doubler startup script
#

This does not restart automatic compression; just automatic expansion of already compressed files. To restart automatic compression, either add the automatic script described below or use the normal Almond Doubler startup procedures after your computer has rebooted to manually restart automatic compression using the GUI.

In order to automatically restart the file compression daemon, a script must be added to execute the launch_doubler program AFTER the compressed file database has been rebuilt by the dblrd program, which may take a few minutes. A script program can monitor this by inspecting the errlog file (a tail of this file should have the "up and running" message). A sample script is shown below and is also contained in the file $DOUBLER_HOME/.doubler/dblrc_launch

#!/bin/sh
#
# File Name:  dblrc_launch
#
#
dblrd_started="N"
while [ "$dblrd_started" != "Y" ]
do
        				sleep 5
grep "Dblrd NFS RPC services commencing" $DOUBLER_HOME/errlog >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
        				if [ $? != 0 ]
        				then
                			dblrd_started="N"
        				else
                			dblrd_started="Y"
        				fi
done
$DOUBLER_HOME/launch_doubler &
exit

This script should either be called as part of the system reboot process (although this will delay the reboot process while waiting for dblrd to initialize) or as part of the login process of a system user with super user privileges.

De-Installing The Almond Doubler

You can de-install The Almond Utilities for UNIX at any time after you have installed them. De-installation is a simple procedure that can be performed by any user with root or system administrator privileges.

NOTE: You should always expand all compressed files before de-installing The Almond Doubler.

Detailed De-Installation Instructions

1. Log in to the system console as Super User, Root, or System Administrator. Start up The Almond Doubler Graphical User Interface. Press the Start Doubler button on the GUI.

2. Set the configuration parameters so that no additional files will be compressed automatically (e.g. set Do Not Compress Files Larger than 1 Mb and Do Not Compress Files Smaller than 1001 Kb).

3. Make sure that all files on your system are expanded (not compressed) by using the Expand. . . option under the Manual menu to expand all files in all sub-directories.

4. Shut down the Doubler daemon by pressing the Stop Doubler button and close the GUI window to exit The Almond Doubler.

5. Each file system will have a hidden compressed file directory named .doubler under its top level. IMPORTANT! Make sure you do not have any compressed data files left in each .doubler directory before proceeding. Remove each dirctory using the command rm -rf .doubler

6. The doubler home directory itself should also be erased, removing all of the Doubler executable files and installation scripts.

7. Remove the Doubler environment variables (DOUBLER_HOME and additions to PATH) from your .profile or .cshrc file in the root directory.

8. Remove any scripts you may have added to automatically start The Almond Doubler when your system reboots.

9. Finally, remove the special user and group created for The Almond Doubler by running the commands userdel -r dfs_compressor and groupdel doubler

The Almond Doubler for UNIX has now been de-installed.