Silent Install for Agent Builder Files

To install an agent from the Agent Builder, you use the option to Create a Solution Installer Image

There is also a silent installation option. A silent.txt, is included with the final package - configure this silent file with all the connection details required. If you require additional template options - I will cover that later.

Run the appropriate installer for the operating system with the -silent option. 

For example:

setupwin32.exe -silent -options response_file

A better alternative to free virtualization.

A recently had to build a new server, really big server... 48 cores, 128gb RAM and 16tb of local storage. I wanted to use VMware ESXi server - the free bare metal hypervisor, but it is limited to 32 cpu's. I looked at Microsoft's HyperV and I have never been less impressed by a product. So I looked at Citrix Xenserver 5.6 - free version. It supports up to 64 cpu's and is a true bare metal hypervisor. There are desktop clients to manage from a workstation, it manages disk stores very niceley and has tools for all the guest OSes. It's not quite as friendly as VMware, but IMHO much more usable and easier to setup clusters.

Hushing those Navigator Updates in TEP

Add these to the cq.ini


KFW_CMW_DETECT_AGENT_ADDR_CHANGE=N
The Navigator function detects when the IP@ for an Agent is discovered. If the Agent environment is constantly changing or has improper configurations that generate excessive Navigator tree rebuilding, consider adding this environment variable to have any discovery of changes or additions of IP address ignored.

KFW_CMW_DETECT_AGENT_HOSTNAME_CHANGE=N
This variable is like the one for detecting Agent address change except that it prevents the Navigator rebuilding if an agent hostname is changed.

KFW_CMW_DETECT_AGENT_PROPERTY_CHANGE=N
Similar to the above except that it prevents the Navigator rebuilding if an agent affinity or affinity version changes.

Configuring the TBSM 4.2.1 Discovery Library Toolkit to work with TADDM 7.1.1 and later

EDIT: Corrected the information after re-testing on a clean machine.

On a Windows TBSM server (I haven't tested this on other platforms), you need to copy the taddm-api-client.jar AND platform-api.jar files from the TADDM SDK into TWO different directories on the TBSM data server to get the Discovery Library Toolkit to work. Specifically, you need to copy taddm-api-client.jar to:

D:\ibm\tivoli\tbsm\XMLToolkit\sdk\clientlib

and copy platform-model.jar to:

D:\ibm\tivoli\tbsm\XMLToolkit\sdk\lib

I found that if you only copy the first file, the toolkit won't work at all, and won't generate any errors or messages of any use.

Scheduled Wakeup in Ubuntu

Well, this is hardly related to Tivoli, but just thought of sharing this cool stuff. I have a 5-year old desktop running Ubuntu Lucid used mainly for running scheduled jobs off of cron. So, basically it plays some music everyday for couple of hours and sits idle for the rest of the day. Ideally, I wanted to put the system on standby all the time and waking it up only when the scheduled job needs run. It is relatively easy to do it in Ubuntu (especially if your BIOS supports it).

Here are the exact steps needed on my Lucid Lynx. Please note that you need to have Kernel 2.6.22 or later for this to work.

1) Install the Power management interface tools.
sudo apt-get install powermanagement-interface
2) Copy the following code somewhere in your filesystem and save it as "suspend_x_hours.sh".

#!/bin/bash
# This script puts the system under standby mode for x hours

usage() {

echo "usage: $0 <n-hours>"

echo "where <n-hours> is the number of hours to be on standby"

exit 0

}
if [ $# -ne 1 ]

then

usage

fi

PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin
hours=$1
echo 0 > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm
echo `date '+%s' -d "+ $hours hours"` > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm
pmi action suspend

3) Schedule the script in root's crontab. e.g the following crontab entry runs at 8PM and puts the system in sleep for 10 hours, waking it up at 6:00 AM.

00 20 * * * /home/venkat/bin/suspend_x_hours.sh 10 2>/dev/null

That's it. It takes only about 10 seconds to resume from sleep and it even restores your SSH sessions when it comes back from sleep!

Hope you find it useful.

ITM Tip: Disabling default situations during install time

Many ITM sites want to disable default ITM situations so that unnecessary alerts are not sent to the operations.  In old days, we usually disable the situations by running a simple script. One such example of the script is posted below.

http://blog.gulfsoft.com/2008/03/disable-all-default-situations.html

This task is much easier with ITM 6.2.2.  While seeding application support, ITM asks you to whether you want to add the default managed system groups to the situation distribution. If you answer no, the default situations will not be distributed to any managed system unless you explicitly assign them! However, this feature is applicable only for fresh installation of ITM 6.2.2 and may not apply to those who are upgrading from old version  of ITM.

GbsNcoSql V2.0

I hope you read the earlier article about the GbsNcoSql tool at the link below.

 

http://blog.gulfsoft.com/2010/01/now-you-have-alternative-to-freetds.html

 

In the first version, the tool could perform only SELECT statements, but now we have updated the tool to execute non-SELECT statements such as INSERT, DELETE and UPDATEs as well. For those who subscribed to this tool, I will send out an updated version this week.

 

Again, this tool is 100% free. Please send an email request from your work email to tony delgross (tony dot delgross at gulfsoft.com). 

 

One disclaimer:  This tool uses FreeTDS libraries to access Omnibus Object server database. While this works, please understand that IBM does not support this method.

IBM - Recording RPT 8 HTTP scripts

Tivoli is doing a great job of updating their support information, including this very detailed article on using RPT with ITCAMfT:

IBM - Recording RPT 8 HTTP scripts

Some possible responses to TADDM Error CTJTD3602E

IBM's documentation contains the following description of this error:

CTJTD3602E: The Change Manager is still processing. Wait and retry the discovery at a later time.

Explanation: The Change Manager is still running to process recent changes discovered. The discovery cannot be started until the Change Manager completes.

Operator Response: None.

Administrator Response: Allow time for the Change Manager to complete its processing before starting a discovery.

Programmer Response: None.

What we have found is that this condition can possibly occur for at least a couple of different reasons. The two situations we've found have been:

1. There was a deadlock on the database that we had to clear. A "little while" after we cleared the lock, we were able to successfully run a discovery again without receiving the error message.

2. The change manager partially ran, but didn't update the CHANGE_SERVER_STATUS table. Specifically, it left the value of the STATUS column set to 16 for the last discovery. To fix this, we had to run the following SQL:

update DB2TADDM.CHANGE_SERVER_STATUS set status = 17

This updates the STATUS column for all rows in the table. You could limit it with a WHERE clause, but in our case, it was valid as is.

We then needed to stop and restart TADDM, and the error message went away.

Identifying newly added systems in Tivoli Monitoring using GBSCMD

Hope you have been using the GBSCMD utility developed by Gulf Breeze for Tivoli Monitoring product.

 

In the latest version of GBSCMD (V3.7.1), there is a cool new feature added to the program. With "gbscmd listnewsystems", it can list the recently deployed systems in the environment along with the deployed time and the type of the agent.  With this feature, you can setup "after-install" policy scripts in ITM  just like Framework with little scripting.

 

Note: IV Blankenship wrote a blog article (http://www.gulfsoft.com/blog_new/print.php?sid=322) about this idea sometime back. 

 

Please note that the list of new systems is lost when TEMS is recycled, so you need to make sure this information is saved in a persistent store like a database or flatfile.

 

You can download the latest documentation for GBSCMD from the following link.

 

http://www.gulfsoft.com/downloads/gbscmdReferenceManual.pdf

 

Not yet subscribed to GBSCMD. Please contact us from your company email and we will send you a copy. Don't worry we will use the email only to send you future updates to GBSCMD. For those, who already subscribed to GBSCMD, we will send an update this week.

 

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