linux for sys admin

[Peter Brimacombe]

I am considering Linux on an x4000 or HP-UX on a B2600 to do systems admin on HP-UX servers (K260, three L boxes).

On the Linux box I need dtterm or xterm, X-Windows applications swinstall, ignite and sam and Omniback user interface, bootp and nfs for a dozen X-terminals , JetAdmin and BIND.

Is anyone doing HP-UX sys admin from Linux?

If I go with Linux is there any software that I should buy to make my life easier? I already have Omniback Enterprise so I assume I don't have buy the client disk agent and user interface.

[Pete Randall]

Many of the applications you're talking about will not run on a Linux box, especially Ignite, swinstall, and SAM. If you're just going to use the box as a gateway to login to the HP-UX servers using the applications on the servers then you should be fine.

Pete

[John Poff · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I've done most of my sys admin work from an Intel box running RedHat Linux for over two years now. I don't have any HP-UX software applications loaded on it, but I don't need it. Since it does X-Windows, I just open an xterm session to the HP-UX box I'm working on, export my DISPLAY variable to my Linux box, and kick off sam, gpm, OmniBack, etc.

JP

[Peter Brimacombe]

for swinstall, ignite and sam, I figure that I will first rlogin to HP-UX , export DISPLAY=linux:0 and then run the application. Can I do rlogin or do I have to do telnet?

[Pete Randall]

Peter,

See John's answer. Also, yes you can do rlogin, telnet, or whatever - they're all available.

Pete

[John Poff]

I just open an xterm window on the Linux box and telnet to all the HP-UX boxes, which correctly set my TERM variable to xterm.

Using a Linux box this way works really well. We have laptops running Window$ instead of desktop machines. They gave us nice big monitors to use at our desks with our laptops. Funny thing, but my big monitor got plugged into my Linux box somehow and now I work off of that all the time, and just use my laptop for e-mail and wasting, uh, I mean *contributing* my time to the ITRC using Internet Exploder. :)

I took it a step further with my Linux box. I setup each of my HP-UX boxes to collect and build system documentation early each morning. Since my Linux box comes with Apache, I whipped together a little web site which displays all the system docs for all our HP-UX systems, updated first thing every morning becuase I configured my little Linux box to copy over the docs automatically. Have a HP system crash during the day? No problem. I've got all the system docs you can think of available via Apache on the Linux box. Don't know how many times I've stood around with the other SAs here and with HP CEs, and somebody says, "Boy, I sure wish we had an ioscan/look at some config file/etc.". No problem. We've got it.

See? You start down this Linux path and the next thing you know you'll be flying low under the radar just like me! ;)

JP

[W.C. Epperson]

We started running the Big Brother network monitor (bb4.com) on a Linux box, and have ended up leveraging the Apache server in the setup to present doc for each HP server, including ioscans, kernel parms, etc. It also serves as a remote syslogger for firewalls, presents our MRTG displays, provides lookup on our DHCP tables, etc.

[Steve Boniwell]

Have you looked at Webmin. This runs OK on your HPUX boxes and will let you add PERL modules to run other system functions as well as give you other admin options. You can download off the web. I've been using it in mixed environments and you can access from any browser in your network. It lets me do remote sys admin on HP boxes, Linux boxes et al. I can even access from a browser on a Gatesville box!!@@$$%

[Peter Brimacombe]

Gatesville - I get it.

Which is better for running Linux the x4000 or the Evo W8000 ?

[Pete Randall]

Peter,

One word of caution: it takes a while for the Linux distributions to catch up with the latest hardware drivers. You can save yourself a lot of installation headaches by *not* going with the latest, greatest hardware.

Pete