Setting up for installation on a Linux server

You must perform the following tasks before starting the installation on a Linux server:

(Optional) Creating a user account on a Linux server

The TrueSight Network Automation installation on a Linux server requires a non-root user account (for example, bcan). This account is referred to as the BCAN_USER account. You can create this account either before installation or during installation.

To create a user account on Linux and assign the required permissions

1. Log on as root.
2. Create the BCAN_USER account.
3. Assign a password to the BCAN_USER account. Make a note of the group to which the user account belongs. You would be asked for this group name by the installer.
   BMC recommends not using the at sign (@) in the password because some device file transfers might fail because they use the user:password@host/file format. So if the password contains an at sign, the file transfer thinks all characters after the at sign is the host.
4. Create a home directory that is owned and writable by that user.
5. Ensure the shell associated with the BCAN_USER account is the Bourne shell (/bin/sh). Also ensure the entry in /etc/passwd is similar to the following example:
   bcan:x:800:800:BCA-Networks User:/export/home/bcan:/bin/sh
6. Execute the umask 022 command.
   This ensures that files and directories created by the installer are usable by the BCAN_USER account.
7. Endure that the BCAN_USER account has access to the FTP and SCP directories.

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Checking required disk space on a Linux server

Perform the following steps to check the required disk space on a Linux server:

1. Confirm that the drive where you plan to install the TrueSight Network Automation application server has at least 1.2 GB of free disk storage. Do not install the software on a network or NFS mounted drive. You must install the software on a local drive.
2. Confirm that the /tmp directory has at least 450 MB of free space.
3. If the /tmp directory does not have sufficient free space, you can run the following commands before installing to make the installation use an alternate temporary directory. The directory specified in this command must have at least 200 MB of free space available.
   $ IATEMPDIR=/your/free/space/tmp_directory
$ export IATEMPDIR
4. Verify that the server host computer has sufficient disk space, as discussed in System requirements.
   The installation uses /var/bca-networks-data as the default for the location of the dynamic data for the application.
   As an alternative, you can install the BCA-Networks-Data directory into a separate partition that meets the disk space requirements.

5. Configure the following permissions:

   Directory	Permissions	Octal Value
   Installation directory	rwx rwx rwx	777
   Temp or alternate directory	rwx rwx rwx	777
   Parent directories of the temp or alternate directory	rwx rwx r-x	775

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Confirming installation of FTP or SCP

Ensure that the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), FTP, and Secure Shell (SSH) or Secure Copy (SCP) services are installed, configured, and enabled (depending on which file transfer protocols you plan to use between the server and your network devices).

You can configure the location of the TFTP, FTP, and SCP directories later in the Device Agent Editor, Admin > Device Agents.

For TFTP, verify that the directory (usually /tftpboot or /var/lib/tftpboot) has user, group, and world read, write, and execute permissions.

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Configuring the hosts file

Confirm that the /etc/hosts file has at least two entries.

• Assign 127.0.0.1 to localhost.

  Warning

  If 127.0.0.1 is not assigned to localhost, installation would fail.

• Assign the static IP address of the server to the server hostname.
  
  

  127.0.0.1 localhost
  10.1.2.3 ena-server-01

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Library requirements

This section discusses the library requirements.

Confirming the availability of libXtst.so and libXrender.so

If you are installing on a 64-bit version of Linux, confirm that both 32-bit and 64-bit version of the following libraries are available:

• libXtst.so: Confirm that the library is available by executing the following command:
  

  locate libXtst.so

  The following output is seen if both 32-bit and 64-bit version of the library are available:

  [root@bna tmp]# locate libXtst.so
  /usr/lib/libXtst.so.6
  /usr/lib/libXtst.so.6.1.0
  /usr/lib64/libXtst.so.6
  /usr/lib64/libXtst.so.6.1.0

  If the library is not available and yum is configured on a Red Hat Linux system, you can install 32-bit and 64-bit version of the library by using the following command:

  yum install libXtst libXtst.i686

• libXrender.so: Confirm that the library is available by executing the following command:
  
  locate libXrender.so
  

  The following output is seen if both 32-bit and 64-bit version of the library are available:

  [root@bna tmp]# locate libXrender.so
  /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libXrender.so.1
  /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libXrender.so.1/libXrender.so.1
  /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libXrender.so.1
  /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libXrender.so.1/libXrender.so.1
  /usr/lib64/libXrender.so
  /usr/lib64/libXrender.so.1
  /usr/lib64/libXrender.so.1.3.0

  If the library is not available and yum is configured on a Red Hat Linux system, you can install 32-bit and 64-bit version of the library by using the following command:

  yum install libXrender libXrender.i686

Other library requirements

Ensure that the nslookup library is available by executing the following command:

locate nslookup

If not installed, and yum is configured on a Red Hat Linux system, then install the library by executing the following command:

yum install nslookup

Configuring databases for Linux

This section describes how to configure PostgreSQL and Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases for Linux.

Configuring PostrgreSQL database

If you use a remote PostrgreSQL database, it must be initialized with UTF-8 encoding. Specify the -encoding UTF-8 option when you initialize the database.

If you are using an embedded PostgreSQL database on a computer running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server version 10, the GLIBC package should be installed. TrueSight Network Automation has been tested with GLIBC version 2.7 and 2.9.

Configuring Oracle and SQL Server databases

Read the topics in this section to understand the tasks that you need to perform on Oracle and SQL Server databases before installing the product on a Linux computer.

SQL Server database user account

BMC recommends creating a user account for use only by TrueSight Network Automation. TrueSight Network Automation strictly prohibits using the sa user account.

SQL Server database schema

BMC recommends creating a new schema for TrueSight Network Automation objects. Confirm that the user login properties has mapping to a user-defined schema.

SQL Server isolation level

On SQL Server, set the READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT isolation level of the TrueSight Network Automation database to ON using the following statements:

ALTER DATABASE <databaseName>
SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON

ALTER DATABASE <databaseName>
SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON

SQL and Oracle database user account privileges

The TrueSight Network Automation Oracle or SQL Server user account must have the following privileges:

Oracle user naming conventions

When creating database users for the TrueSight Network Automation installation, ensure that the user names meet these requirements:

• User names contain upto 30 characters.
• User names contain only alphanumeric characters from your database character set and the underscore (_), dollar sign ($), and pound sign (#).
• User names do not contain hyphens (-).
• Oracle Database reserved words are not used as user names. 

For more information about naming database users, see the guidelines and rules stated for the non-quoted identifiers in the Schema Object Names and Qualifiers section in the Oracle documentation.

Oracle RAC data file path

If your database is an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) using Automatic Storage Management (ASM) to manage the data file, the path to the data file must use the following format:

+DATA_SPACE

or

+DATA_SPACE/path/data_file_name

For example, if the data space name in your Oracle RAC environment is named DATA, you would enter +DATA.

Oracle RAC databases that are not using ASM should use the standard format, the absolute file path to the database data file.

Oracle 12c

When performing a fresh installation with Oracle 12c, you must execute one of the the following commands to ensure that the pluggable database is started if the Create New User option is selected.

alter pluggable database all open; or alter pluggable database <pluggable_db_name> open;

Checking IPv6 configuration on Linux

If you are installing the TrueSight Network Automation application server or remote device agent on a host computer that has both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, or only the IPv6 protocol, confirm that the DNS is properly configured.

To confirm, run the nslookup command on the local host name and confirm that both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are configured, as shown in the following example:

Linux nslookup to verify IP addresses

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