Disable searching of a CDROM device whith swinstall

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

How can I disable the ioscan for searching a CDROM device when I execute a swinstall, swremove, swcopy, etc. ?
Despite I execute the swinstall with the "-s" opction, it always try to search a CDROM device using ioscan, so it take several minutes cause I have lots of disks connected to my system ( 2 XP ).

Thanks.

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

I am using HP-UX 11.00 on all my systems. On HP-UX 10.20 it didn`t happend.

Thanks.

[Edward Sedgemore]

I dont believe thats correct. If you use swinstall/swcopy with the -s option first then it doesnt do an ioscan.
Only if you use the GUI does it do one as it has to build up a list of devices to install from.

If you do something like;

swinstall -s /SD_CDROM etc.....

Then it goes straight to the mounted CD, it does not to an ioscan.

[Vincenzo Restuccia]

swinstall -s host:/SD_CDROM

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

I agree with you, but it happens to me every time I execute an swinstall with "-s" option or a swcopy. But I don`t undertand why cause I am telling swinstall to use a source depot, why it is searching for a CDROM device ???

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

The cuestion it`s that:
Supouse I`m tring to install a depot like this:

swinstall -s /tmp/patch.depot

Why swinstall try to search a CDROM device ( it use a ioscan command to do this and expend a lot of time ) ?

[Pedro Sousa]

I don't find any problem too.
Anyway, check if you have the latest sd-ux patches. for example: PHCO_21492 fixes a big number of bugs.
good luck.

[Edward Sedgemore]

This is very interesting. I suspect you have an SD defaults file setup somewhere by someone which is always trying to access the CD.

Check in;

/var/adm/sw/defaults
(has anyone added anything to this file, the default one only has comments in it).

or $HOME/.sw/sessions
If this dir/file exists then remove it all. Then try your sw command again.

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

I removed the contents of $HOME/sw/sessions and the file /var/adm/sw/default is empty, it only have comments, but it didn`t work.


Thanks.

[Edward Sedgemore]

In you example above you said this;

swinstall -s /tmp/patch.depot

This command is missing the selection, which means if you executed it then it will try to fire up the GUI or text based GUI, thus searching for your CDROM. If you did a command on the above like this;

swlist -s /tmp/patch.depot

Then it wont search for your CDROM, correct ?
If you want to install a patch (or all patches) from /tmp/patch.depot then doing this;

swinstall -s /tmp/patch.depot \*

Will work without serching for your CDROM. Try it.

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

You say that if I execute swinstall whith the GUI, the GUI will always try to search a CDROM device. Is it correct ?

[Edward Sedgemore]

Yes, the GUI or text based GUI always searches for a CDROM when launched, even if you have the option set in /var/adm/sw/defaults swinstall.source_cdrom = .

The only way to stop this happening is to use swinstall/swcopy on the command line only, this never searches for a CDROM - it always goes straight to the depot/source youve specified using the -s option.

[Miguel A. Aliaga]

This may be a new feature on HP-UX 11.x cause on HP-UX 10-20 when you execute swinstall -s depot ( not CDROM ) the GUI don`t search for a CDROM device and load directly the depot especificated.

[Edward Sedgemore]

Your right! On 10.20 just typing swinstall by itself when the GUI starts it doesnt search for the CDROM - just goes to the source selection window, but on 11 it displays the message "searching for CDROM.." (which can take ages) before going to the source selection window. Very interesting.

I wonder if theyve modified it in 11i ? Has someone got 11.11 yet and can try ?

[alan chen_2 · Accepted solution]

Try to rename file /usr/sam/lbin/find_cdroms, this will disable swinstall to search the cdrom.

Regards