Requirements for installing on UNIX and Linux

Ensure that your firewall allows communication on all ports used by various components of BMC Server Automation. For more information on ports, see BMC Server Automation ports.

If the host computer on which you are installing BMC Server Automation has:

• A supported version of Perl installed — The Network Shell installation automatically installs the Network Shell Perl module. (For information about the Perl versions that BMC Server Automation supports, see Perl support.)
• An unsupported version of Perl installed — The installation copies files that allow you to install the Perl module after you have installed the supported version of Perl.

• Set the umask for the root users to 0027 or 0022 on the Application Server host computer.
• BMC Server Automation might have many open files at any given point in its operation. Therefore, unless your environment has specific needs for a more restrictive setting (depending on the specific operation of the Application Server), BMC recommends that you set the following operating system parameters for the bladmin user:
  • Set core files to unlimited: ulimit -c unlimited
  • Set the number of open file descriptors to 8192: ulimit -n 8192

• The Linux file system partition to which you plan to install the Default Application Server must not be mounted with the nosuid option.

If you plan to install a separate file server, ensure that you have performed the following prerequisite tasks:

• The unified product installer automatically installs the RSCD agent on the separate file server during installation. However, you can manually install the RSCD agent on your separate file server, as described in Installing an RSCD agent (Windows) or Installing only the RSCD agent (Linux and UNIX).
• If the Application Server is running on Linux, the unified product installer can only install the RSCD agent on a separate file server that is also running on Linux. If the separate file server is running on Windows, you must manually install the RSCD Agent based on the procedures in Installing an RSCD agent (Windows).

The unified product installer needs to be run by a super user — root or a root-equivalent user on Linux. This enables the installer to install components on the Application Server and File Server.

During installation, default security settings are applied to the Application Server and file server. BMC recommends that you adjust the security level on the Application Server host computer and the file server host computer after completing the installation, based on your unique needs and the IT security policies at your organization.

By default, the unified product installer configures the RSCD agent on the file server to map incoming connections to the Administrator or root user. The following mapping is added to the exports file:

*rw, user=root

If you do not want to map the connections to the root user, you can manually modify the exports file to suit your needs. The exports file is located at the following path, BBSA<version_number>-<platform>\files\installers\other_files\maintenance_scripts.zip\linux\. For more information, see Configuring the exports file. Alternatively, you can manually install the RSCD agent on the separate file server, see Installing only the RSCD agent (Linux and UNIX).

• Linux platforms on which you plan to install the Application Server or Network Shell must have the appropriate version of libtermcap.so.2 and libtermcap.so.6 shared library installed. Install the shared library before installing these components. For more information, see Requirement for installing the Application Server, BMC Server Automation Console, or Network Shell on Linux.
• For Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6 x64 KVM, ensure that the glibc package is installed.
• If you are using the RedHat offline patch downloader, ensure that the glibc.i686 library is present (due to Java 8.1 imbedded JRE).

• Ensure that your machine meets the minimum software and hardware requirements as described in Minimum software requirements and Minimum hardware requirements.
• You must have an X Window display system installed and configured on your Linux machine.
• Ensure that you have set up a database for use by BMC Server Automation, as discussed in Setting up an Oracle database for BMC Server Automation and Setting up a SQL Server database and user for BMC Server Automation.