PING : SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTOR FAQ
Q . What do I do when swagentd will not start?
A. Ensure that the hostname of the system you are wishing to start swagentd on, is listed in /etc/hosts and has a correct IP address. Enusre that there is no duplication of hostnames or IP addresses in /etc/hosts.
Also ensure that there is the line of in /etc/hosts:-
Q. Swagentd daemon will not start when the system I wish to install software onto is in single-user mode. How can I start it ?
A. Touch the file ‘/var/adm/sw/standalone’ and ensure that the hostname of the system is set and this is included in the hosts file.
Q. When I attempted to install some software, the following message occurred:-
<file_name> could not be located.
But the file exists. What is happening?
A. This message is usually triggered by networking related problems and the first step is to ensure that there are no duplicate entries in /etc/hosts.
Q. During the analysis phase of swinstall, swinstall hangs. Why is this?
A. Check to see if all the file systems that are listed in /etc/fstab are mounted. If not all are, then you can uncheck the swinstall option of mount all filesystems
This option is the default, and swinstall will appear to hang as it attempts to mount file systems listed in /etc/fstab but may not be able to.
Q. My swinstall session always hangs but at different times of the session. How can I stop this happening?
A. Ensure that the latest Software Distributor Cumulative Patch is installed. If you have Glance/MeasureWare running, stop these, and restart the swinstall process again.
Q. Everytime I attempt to install using swinstall, the following message appears:-
RPC_TIMED_OUT
Appears in the swagent.log.
What is happening?
A. This normally occurs when there is a noisy network, or a network card that is noisy. Correct this by setting the following option:-
Swinstall.rpc_timeout=9
In the /var/adm/sw/defaults file.
Q. When I run swlist, I get the following message occurs:- Incorrect keyword X11
And then the correct swlist output. What is this and how can I remove this?
A. This output is referring to a bundle that is still listed in the Software Distributor IPD but refers to a earlier OS release bundle.This message normally occurs after an upgrade and it occurs because the bundle reference is different to the bundle reference for the new OS release. You will notice that on the system when this message occurs, there are 2 X11 bundles and one refers to a previous release version.
To remove this earlier version bundle, run the following:-
Swmodify -u X11,r=B.10.xx (where XX is the version)
Q. After upgrading my OS version, I can still see older version of patches that were on the system before I upgraded it. Can I remove these with swremove?
A. No!!! Removing these patches with swremove will remove chunks of the current operating system as it currently is. When you upgraded, the OS that was as the previous release, was patched to a certain level. Some parts of that OS may have not changed when the new version was released. So by removing the patches, you could be removing files that are being used in this current release.
The safest way and only supported method to remove patches that you suspect are old versions that are now not needed, is to use the cleanup(1M) utility. This is delivered onto the system by patch.
There are 4 options to choose from which ensure that only the patches that are not needed any longer are removed.
One of these options allows the removal of some of the entries in /var/adm/sw/patch to be safely removed.
Q. I need to free up some space in /var and some of the entries in /var/adm/sw/patch do not appear to be installed on my system. Can I remove them?
A. It is not safe to remove these entries in /var/adm/sw/patch unless you have run cleanup. Removing a directory in this location, could prevent you from backing out a patch that is currently loaded on the system.
Q. When I run swlist -l product, I only see some of the products on my system, not all. Whats happended and how can I fix this?
A. The IPD (Installed Products Database) has become corrupt and therefore cannot display all the information as it should. This can happen if there has been a problem during the last swinstall session or that there was a lack of space in /var. To correct this, the easiest way to correct this is to restore a copy of /var/adm/sw/products/INDEX from backup.
Another way of correcting this, is to move the original INDEX file to another location, and then touch /var/adm/sw/INDEX and then install , say for example, a MAN fileset. This will attempt to rebuild this main INDEX file from all the products’ own INDEX files that are located below the /var/adm/sw/products/<PRODUCTS> directory structure.
Q. When I run swconfig, the resulting output in the logs shows some mtime errors. What are these and how can I correct them?
A. Mtime stands for modification time. The mtime of a file is set at the inode level and can be set by merely ‘touching’ a file. To correct this, run these commands:-
Swmodify -a <file_name>
This will update the file in /var/adm/sw/products/<PRODUCT_NAME>/INFO.
If you examine the INFO file, you will see a mtime entry in this, although the numeric value will not be clear to intrepret.
PATCH MANAGEMENT RELATED QUESTIONS
Q. When I download patches fom the HP Web site, www.europe-support.external.hp.com I get a file which when I attempt to install, swinstall says that it is not the correct format. What went wrong?
A. When you download a patch from the web site, you need to run:-
sh <PATCH_NAME>
And this will create a PATCH_NAME.depot file. It is this, which you specify when running:-
Swinstall -s <PATCH_NAME.depot>
When installing it.
Q. I want to install a number of patches that all require reboots. I do not, however, what the system to reboot multiple times as this increase the downtime of the system. How can I get around this?
A. The way to avoid multiple reboots, is to swcopy(1M) the patches into the same disk depot and then install the contents of the depot in the one swinstall(1M) session.
Thus:-
Swcopy -s <PATCH_NAME.depot> @ /<depot name>
Repeat as necessary and then issue the one swinstall command:-
swinstall -s /<depotname> \*
Q. What do the last two characters after ‘PH’ denotes?
A. They note the type of patch. We issue many types of patches for all ranges of solutions and OS.
The most common denominations are:-
| PHNE | Networking patch , covering all networking issues |
| PHCO | Command patch covering areas such as SAM, spooler, ls(1) |
| PHSS | Sub-system. These patches can cover subjects are are not totally related to either networking or commands. |
| PHKL | Kernel patch. Examples of this type are, LVM,filesystem |
We produce patches for other software such as OpenView,MeasureWare for non-HPUX OSs but these tend to be for specific upgrades and can only be obtained via the Response Centre.
Q. My patch would not install on my 10.20 system. It reported in the swagent.log that it could not install because the patch it depended on another patch, which according to swinstall, could not be found on the target. Swlist shows the patch. Whats happening?
A. In this instance the reason why the patch would not install because the status of the patch that it dependended on, was not installed fully onto the system.
swlist -a state -l fileset <PATCH>
would have shown that the status of the patch that appeared to be already on the system, was in either one of two states. Those are TRANSIENT or INSTALLED state.
Patches in a INSTALLED state indicate that they have been installed but have not had their components integrated into the libraries, kernel etc of the OS and therefore need to be CONFIGURED before another patch, which depends on them, can be installed. This checking is done in the checkinstall scripts of patches that need to do this check.
It always, therefore a wise measure to ensure before installs that all patches are in a CONFIGURED state.
The only reasons why patches are in INSTALLED state on systems are:-
Patches in a TRANSIENT state indicates that their installation failed during the analysis phase and the execution phase. There could be a number of reasons for this:-
On 11. X systems we have additional states, which need explanation.
At 11. X there are number of states that a patch can be in. They are:-
These states apply to installed patches only.
Filesets have their own status, which can be any of the following:-
Filesets that are in a CORRUPT state indicate that some of their internal data, i.e entries in the IPD are not valid and therefore when swconfig(1M) has run at boot, it has marked these patches in this state.
Q. I am attempting to install some patches onto a system that has no tape drive from the tape drive of another system that does, but the install keeps failing. Why?
A. Software Distributor does not support remote tape devices as valid installation sources. To workaround this problem, you need to complete the following sequence of commands to copy the patches from the tape to your destination system:-