topic Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot? in Operating System - HP-UX

How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tony Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:20:33 GMT

I need to get RSP installed on several remote HP-UX servers. I have a local depot created but the install took 3 hours over the network. Is there a way to copy my existing depot to a depot file that I can copy to the remote servers and install the software locally?

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

James R. Ferguson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:24:11 GMT

Hi Tony:

A valid SD depot file can simply be copied ('rc', 'scp', FTP) to another server and the installation performed there.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tony Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:28:24 GMT

Hi James,

Thanks for the info but what I have is a several applications in a directory that is registered as a depot:

swlist -d @ /depot/Diagnostics
# Initializing...
# Contacting target "idns2"...
#
# Target:
/depot/Diagnostics
#

#
# Bundle(s):
#

EventMonitoring A.04.20.23.04 Event Monitoring Service
OnlineDiag B.11.23.13.03 HPUX 11.23 Support Tools Bundle, September 2009
OpenSSL A.00.09.07l.007 Secure Network Communications Protocol
SysMgmtBASE B.00.02.03.03 SysMgmtBASE
SysMgmtWeb A.3.0.1.1 HP-UX Web Based System Management User Interfaces
WBEMSvcs A.02.07.04 HP WBEM Services for HP-UX
hpuxwsApache B.2.0.59.07.03 HP-UX Apache-based Web Server
hpuxwsTomcat B.5.5.27.01.01 HP-UX Tomcat-based Servlet Engine
hpuxwsWebmin A.1.070.10 HP-UX Webmin-based Admin

Can I tar the directory and copy it tothe remote server and register it on the remote server?

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Torsten. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:48:59 GMT

Hi Tony,

>>Can I tar the directory and copy it to the remote server and register it on the remote server?

Yes.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:01:38 GMT

Shalom,

The file copy is going to take a long time, assuming the RSP depot is big and thats why the installation took a long time.

On the target system, you might want to check that DNS name resolution is working properly, because a named install from an NFS share is going to look up the name many times.

scp, ftp, rcp, and doing the install locally will as you want bypass the problem. Detecting the actual cause of the problem might be somewhat useful.

SEP

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tony Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:44:01 GMT

Thansk Steven,

I'll give it a second look. I assume its because its a fractional T1 line running at 128 Kb, but its probably worth looking to see what's limiting bandwidth.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

James R. Ferguson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:59:49 GMT

Hi (again):

There is no need to register ('swreg') your copied depot unless you wish to utilize it over the network; and you said that was not your objective.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tim Nelson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:15:05 GMT

If DNS is not causing your issue then I would second the motion to simply tar and gzip the depot .

ftp it to your server

gunzip / untar

swinstall

( as mentioned there is no need to register it. swreg is only needed if you are creating a respository on one server to server other servers. )

I would bet $1 that by the time you get all this done you would have spent the same amount of time, barring the mentioned DNS possibility )

Other options: These packages should all be on one of the Core DVDs or application DVDs, order or make copies, ship via fedex.. ?

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tony Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:41:18 GMT

The directory was 250 MB I tar'd it and gzipped down to 125 MB. I used scp to copy it over the network locally (GBe) and it took 17 seconds. I scp'd it over the remote network and it took 17 minutes, the install took another 10 minutes. The swinstall over the remote network took 1 hour 20 minutes, so I saved 50 minutes of work time and 63 minutes of network congestion. I have to do this about 30 more times so this is awesome.

Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Bob E Campbell — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:45:40 GMT

I would either use swcopy(1m) to copy or swpackage(1m) to create a depot file. The command for the latter is given as an example on the man page:

swpackage -s /var/spool/sw -x media_type=tape @ /dev/rmt/0m

Replace that tape device with a file that is *not* a tape device and you are good to go.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Steven Schweda — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:48:49 GMT

> [...] simply tar and gzip the depot .
>
> ftp it to your server
>
> gunzip / untar
>
> swinstall

Or, if you can do remsh/ssh (without a
password), then you should be able to
pipeline the whole mess, obviating the
intermediate temporary file.

A Forum search for keywords like
tar pipeline remsh
should find abundant examples.

As always, if your stuff is too big for your
"tar" program, then "pax" or GNU "tar" may be
a better choice.

And, if the CPUs are much faster than the
network, then using bzip2 instead of gzip
might also pay off.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tony Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:40:15 GMT

Thanks Bob,

swpackage works as well as tar'ing the direcoties, the depot file is that same size as the tar file and compressed to the same level. swpackage took a bit longer to execute than tar but not by much.

swpackage -s /depot/Diagnostics -x media_type=tape @ ./Diagnostics.depot

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Bob E Campbell — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:09:21 GMT

The big difference is that you can install from the swpackage file directly, and there *might* be alignments of the planets that let the tar ball be used for installation, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Dennis Handly — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:50:56 GMT

>The directory was 250 MB I tar'd it and gzipped down to 125 MB

That's surprising. The files in a depot are usually gzipped. But the metadata files aren't.

>Bob: The big difference is that you can install from the swpackage file directly,

And you can use swcopy/swpackage to subset your depot if you don't want to copy all of it.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Bob E Campbell — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:09:47 GMT

Dennis is right in that software that HP ships directly is usually internally compressed. For locally built depots you can swcopy them into a compressed form using the "-x compress_files=true" (ignore the -x compress_index option).

Failing that, the .depot file can be gzipped for xfer but will need to be expanded to use.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Bob E Campbell — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:27:18 GMT

Someone here deeper in the code assures me that movement by a tar ball can also have issues with ACLs. Potentially even the default ACLs...

Use swpackage(1m) or swcopy(1m).

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Tony Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:33:20 GMT

Thanks for that piece of info Bob. I used both and liked swpackage better because it offered the most verification that everything went well, i.e. log output, and the swverify tool. I also like it because when I document how to do this the instructions are easier using swpackage than tar.

The tar worked well but doesn't give you any feedback until you actually try and use it.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Bob E Campbell — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:39:57 GMT

Good to hear! I will admit to all that I sometimes use "tar tvf" as a quick sanity check for serial depots.

Re: How to create a .depot file from an exisitng depot?

Dennis Handly — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:27:54 GMT

>Bob: Someone here deeper in the code assures me that movement by a tar ball can also have issues with ACLs.

I had someone that used tar and I couldn't believe it could work.
I told him to come over to the SD dark side and use swpackage.