Script to retrieve Tivoli patches

For the longest time, I have been visiting the IBM FTP site looking for patches that have recently become available. This is especially true when I am waiting for one to come out that I am expecting. If anyone else has done this, then you know how much fun that is. I am on the various emails that let you know when patches are released, but these seem to have no rhyme or reason on when they are run or what they report on. The best source seems to be the FTP site.

Recently I decided to do something I have been meaning to do for the longest time and that is write a simple script that would connect to the ftp site and find any recently released patches. In order to use this script there are a couple modifications that will need to be done. I have kept all the variables in the Initialize subroutine in order to make these modifications easier.

Variables:
SMTP Server - This will need to be modified to supply any smtp server.
    $gMailDomain = "";

Sender address - Whatever the address you want the "From" field to use
    $gSenderAddr = "\@";

Recipient - Address to send the listing to
    $gToAddr = "\@";

    Note: to send to multiple addresses, just comma delimit:
    $gToAddr = "name1\@domain.com, name2\@domain";

Also there is a variable to specify the number of days to look back for patch updates. Just set the global variable $gDayDiff to the number of days you want to look back for updates.

When the script is executed, it will create a file called updates.html (name can be modified by changing the global variable $gHtmlFile). This file is then used as input into the email.

This script does have a requirement for the Mail::Sender module. If you do not want to receive the emails, then comment out the following lines
    use Mail::Sender
    SendMail();
    The entire SendMail subroutine

The file can be downloaded from: http://www.gulfsoft.com/downloads/blog_downloads/patches_list.zip

I have tested the execution on Windows XP, Vista and Red Hat 4. Please let me know of any errors you might encounter.

BTW, leave comments and let us know you are out there.

Thanks

Martin Carnegie

Changing OMNIBus password in TIP/ITNM

The Object Server password is stored in encrypted form in these three files on the TIP server:

/opt/IBM/tivoli/tip/properties/objectserver.properties
/opt/IBM/tivoli/tip/profiles/TIPProfile/config/cells/TIPCell/wim/config/wimconfig.xml
/opt/IBM/tivoli/tip/profiles/TIPProfile/etc/webtop/datasources/ncwDataSourceDefinitions.xml


The last file states the encryption used, which tells you which ncw_*_crypt command to run (this stanza is directly above the ObjectServer hostname):

< !-- ! Login information to access the datasource specified in ! .
! - encrypted : If true, the password is encrypted (using nco_g_crypt)
! - algorithm (optional) : [AES|FIPS]
! If set to AES and encrypted attribute is set to true,
! the password is encrypted (using ncw_aes_crypt).
! If set to FIPS and encrypted attribute is set to true,
! the password is encrypted (using ncw_fips_crypt).
!-->

<ncwdatasourcecredentials username="root" password="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx==" encrypted="true" algorithm="FIPS">

</ncwdatasourcecredentials>


To change the password, in this case you would run ncw_fips_crypt and place the encrypted passwd in the three files listed above.

Parallelizing processes with xargs

I came across some useful information today on using the Unix xargs command to speed up processing:

http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20090304/

The speed increase with the addition of a single flag is pretty amazing.

Integrating Impact with ITM via Web Services

At Pulse 2009 IV Blankenship gave a short session on Integration Impact with ITM via Web Services. I recorded the video and have posted it to youtube.com.

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re8CjQ0Irx4

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tToFieRylfQ

Contact tony.delgross@gulfsoft.com or iv.blankenship@gulfsoft.com for more information.

ITM 6.2.1: What is new in Agent Deployment

If you have been using the "tacmd createnode" to deploy agents in the past, you are in for a pleasant surprise in ITM 6.2.1!  IBM added few welcome changes to the above command.  These new features not only makes the deployment easier, they enable you keep track of agent deployment like you'd do in sophisticated products like ITCM.   This article discusses the new features in detail.

Background Execution

If you invoke the tacmd createnode with the usual parameters (remote system name, user and password), it will NOT hang until the agent deployed as it was before. Instead, it will give you a transaction ID and return back control. Kinda similar to "winstsp" command in ITCM. Are you already seeing some ITCM like behavior? Wait there is more! To get the status of the deployment, use the new tacmd subcommand, "tacmd getdeploystatus".  It lists all the distributions you have done so far and their status. A sample output is shown below. 

Transaction ID : 12292212812729130001281138021

Command        : INSTALL

Status         : SUCCESS

Retries        : 0

TEMS Name      : VSITM621WIN

Target Hostname: 192.168.162.169

Platform       : WINNT

Product        : NT

Version        : 062100000

Error Message  : KDY2065I: The node creation operation was a success.

Batch Deployment

ITM 6.2.1 "tacmd createnode" supports batch deployment of agents. For example, you can create a deployment group named AppServers, add all appservers to that group and send deployment to them using single tacmd createnode command.  There are new additions to subcommands viz. tacmd creategroup, tacmd addgroupmember and tacmd deletegroupmember to manage groups and its members. 

Workspaces

To keep track of all your agent deployments, ITM 6.2.1 adds new workspaces to TEPS at the Enterprise level.  The workspace provides a summary of all your deployments including number of agents Succeeded, Failed, Progress, etc, similar to MDist2 Console. There is also another workspace called "Deployment Status Summary By Transaction" providing status of deployments by Transaction ID.  A sample Workspace view is shown below.

 

Remote Execution

One other subtle difference documented is that you can execute "tacmd createnode" from anywhere and you don't have to be logged on to TEMS server.   

These feature additions are steps in the right direction for managing agent deployment and I hope you will find the features helpful.  

Adding disk space to a Linux VM in VMWare - Take 2

A little while back Frank posted a blog about increasing the size of a logical volume in Linux (http://blog.gulfsoft.com/2008/11/adding-disk-space-to-linux-vm-in-vmware.html). I tried this out and it worked great.

I also had to do something similar in Windows, which turns out to be much simpler by using the VMWare Converter. Unfortunately this is not supported for Linux. The one thing that got me thinking though is that Windows can increase from a single drive and not have to use a separate drive. So why could I not do this in Linux?

The reason I needed to do this was for the new version of TPM (7.1). I originally had my VM set up with 20GB allocated, but the new version now requires approximately 50Gb to install, so the steps below are what I used to increase the LVM for my TPM install.

Here is my setup:
VM Ware: VMWare Server 2.0.0
Host OS: Windows 2003 SE SP2 x64
Guest OS: Red Hat ES4 U5

Increase VM Disk Size
Use the VMWare tool vmware-vdiskmanager.exe to increase the size

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Server>vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x 50GB "f:\
VM_Images\VM TPM7.1 RH\rhes4srv01\Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.vmdk"
Disk expansion completed successfully.


Use fdisk to create new partition
Even though the previous step reports that more disk was added, it still is not recognized by the OS.

Current file system:
df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 19448516 1964128 16496436 11% /
/dev/sda1 101086 13232 82635 14% /boot
none 257208 0 257208 0% /dev/shm

1. Enter the FDISK utility
fdisk /dev/sda

2. Print the existing partition table
Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 53.6 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 2610 20860402+ 8e Linux LVM

3. Create new partition. This will be a Primary partition and is the 3rd partition. For the cylimder values, press enter to accept the defaults

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 3
First cylinder (2611-6527, default 2611):
Using default value 2611
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (2611-6527, default 6527):
Using default value 6527

4. Set the Partition type to Linux LVM (hex 8e)
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 3
Hex code (type L to list codes): 8e
Changed system type of partition 3 to 8e (Linux LVM)

5. Print the Partition table again to see the new partition
Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 53.6 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 2610 20860402+ 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda3 2611 6527 31463302+ 8e Linux LVM

6. Write the new partition information
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.

7. Reboot

Create the Logical Volume
Now that the partition is created, the physical and logical volume needs to be created

1. Create the Physical Volume - use the new partition information from the df command. In this case the new partition is /dev/sda3
pvcreate /dev/sda3
Physical volume "/dev/sda3" successfully created

2. Add the new Physical Volume to the Logical Volume
vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda3
Volume group "VolGroup00" successfully extended

3. Extend the Logical Volume.

vgdisplay
--- Volume group ---
VG Name VolGroup00
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 2
Metadata Sequence No 4
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 2
Open LV 2
Max PV 0
Cur PV 2
Act PV 2
VG Size 49.88 GB
PE Size 32.00 MB
Total PE 1596
Alloc PE / Size 635 / 19.84 GB
Free PE / Size 961 / 30.03 GB
VG UUID bzOq45-o5yO-ruYY-Ffx1-DxCx-2e2j-ardXtu

lvextend -L +30.03G /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
Rounding up size to full physical extent 30.03 GB
Extending logical volume LogVol00 to 48.88 GB
Logical volume LogVol00 successfully resized

Note: The lvextend can either use the value of the Free PE from the vgdisplay command or the command lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. I found out about the %FREE after, so I did not test this.

4. Extend the filesystem
The resize2fs does not work for this situation. The command ext2online will allow for the disk to be resized while disk is still mounted.

ext2online /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

5. View the new file system
df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 50444996 1972848 45911716 5% /
/dev/sda1 101086 13232 82635 14% /boot
none 1825828 0 1825828 0% /dev/shm

And there is a system with a nice large drive. Hope this helps you.

TPM 7.1 Notes

After checking out TPM 7.1 for a little while, I thought I would post some of my observations on this new version.

Downloads
Get ready for another big download. To download the media for Windows, it was approximately 15GB. I also downloaded the Linux media, but really they do share a bunch between the various OS installs, so this was only another 5GB. The IBM document for downloading is located at http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24020532

Installation
For now, I have only done the Windows based install as I was more interested in the actual product usage rather than fighting with an install at this time. Little did I know that the install would be a bit of a fight.

I decided to go with the default install for now just to get it up and running. So I brought up my trusty Windows 2003 SP2 VM image and started to prep it for the installation. Since the disk requirements were more than I allocated to my C drive, I created a new drive and allocated 50GB for an E drive. I then extracted the images to the E drive and started installing. After a few pages of entering information, I started to get failures. After checking around and asking IBM support, it turns out the default install is only supported on one volume (this is in the documentation, but not really clear as I was installing everything on one “volume”, the E drive). So I had to increase the C drive space (thanks to VMware Converter) and start again. After that the install went fine. It took about 5 hours to complete.

Start Up
Starting TPM is not much different than it was in the 5.x versions. There is a nice little icon to start and stop TPM. The only issue I had is that the TDS (Tivoli Directory Server) does not start automatically. This means that you cannot log in! You have to manually start the TDS service. I am sure that this has something to do with startup prereqs, but have not investigated right now.

New User Interface
Because I have used TSRM (Tivoli Service Request Manager), the interface was not that foreign to me, but still way different than the 5.x interface. I find that it is not as fluid as the old interface but is way more powerful and flexible. With a proper layout, I am sure that it can be way easier to navigate than 5.x.

One thing that does bug me is that Internet Explorer is the only supported browser. I have been using Firefox and everything seems to work fine except for the reports (could be just my setup)

The new interface has tabs which are called Start Center Templates. These start Centers can be setup to provide shortcuts into the application that are specific to the function of the user. So if you have someone that is an inventory specialist, you can create a layout that will provide quick access to everything they need to perform their job rather than displaying what they do not need like workflows and security. A user/group can also be assigned multiple Start Center templates. This is useful for using existing templates created for various job functions and providing them to a user whose role spreads multiple areas.

Start Center - Default Provisioning Administrator

Discovery
There is something new called a Discovery Wizard. These wizards can perform multiple functions for discovery rather than the one step discovery (RXA discovery or inventory). For example, one wizard is called Computer Discovery, Common Agent Installation and Inventory Discovery. This discovery does exactly what it says. The first step will be to discover the computer using the RXA discovery, then once that is completed, install the TCA on the discovered systems, and then do an inventory scan of the systems. Worked pretty nice. The only issue I had is that the default setting for the TCA is to enable the SDI-SAP. This means that in order to perform the inventory scan, the SDI environment needs to be configured first. Either that, or change the global variable TCA.Create.EO.SAP to false.

Computer General Information

Computer Hardware Information (CPU)

Computer Software Information


Reporting
Reporting for 7.1 is WAY different than 5.x. TPM now uses BIRT to provide reporting instead of the DB2 Alphablox. Now there is good and bad with this new reporting method. The bad thing is that it is quite a bit more complex than the 5.x reports. The 5.x was pretty simple to use and create a report. The good thing is that BIRT is quite a bit more flexible and is being standardized across the various Tivoli products (Tivoli Common Reporting is BIRT with WebSphere) so the experience from one product can be shared across all.

Another note is that reports are no longer used for the dynamic groups. Dynamic groups use something called a query (I think I will follow-up on this in a future blog).

Sample Report – What Hardware is installed on what server

General Comments

The new version of TPM is looking very promising. The interface is very flexible/customizable, which is something that the old interface was not. The old interface did seem to flow a bit better by allowing the opening of new windows and tabs by right clicking on an object. This is not something that can be done in the new interface. The old one was specifically designed for the job it had to do, but really could not do much more, where the new interface will allow for the ability to expand beyond just TPM functions. This new interface is the same one shared by TSRM, TAMIT, TADDM and many other Maximo products.

Now we just need to see what will happen with the new version of TPMfSW (possibly named TDM or Tivoli Desktop Manager) to see what the full direction will be. One other thing that I know is on the list is the new TCA. This was something that I was hoping would be squeaked in (it was not promised for this release) but hopefully the 7.1.1 release will.

If you have any comments or questions, please fire them off and I will see what I can do to answer them.