README

Web-based System Manager for AIX 5L Version 5.2.0.30

Limitations
 

Various preference file problems have been discovered.

Depending on the features used, preference files may not be compatible between AIX 5L Version 5.1 and Version 5.2. When an incompatibility exists, you will receive an information dialog during startup: "Unable to load preferences from ...". In this situation all of your preferences will be reset to their default settings. If you do not want to modify the preference file saved on disk (in case you want to use the preference file on a 5.1 system), be sure to not save the file on exit, or use Save As to specify another preference file name.

If your managing server does not have the monitoring application installed but you are managing a machine that does have the monitoring application, such that it is downloaded onto the managing server, then any preferences saved may cause Web-based System Manager to display the dialog "Unable to load preferences from..." the next time it is started from that managing server. This is because the data stored in the preference file cannot be fully interpreted by the applications local to that machine. Either install the monitoring application on the managing server, or choose one of the possible solutions listed in the previous bullet.

The preference file used by the monitoring application may not be compatible between AIX 5L Version 5.1 and Version 5.2. This may result in warning dialogs being displayed which contain exceptions. This problem can be resolved by deleting the monitoring preference file from the user's home directory. The monitoring file is named wsmmonitoring.data.

The 'All Users' and 'All Groups' plug-ins only work with locally defined users and groups. Virtual NIS users and groups defined in NIS, NIS+ and other similar services are ignored.

The Configurations/Classes plug-in of the Workload Manager application is not dynamically refreshed when the applicable configuration has changed inside a configuration set. To show the effective current configuration, select the reload icon on the tool bar from within the Configuration/Classes plug-in.

Cluster Systems Management is a new application to manage clusters. More information can be found in the document: IBM Cluster Systems Management for AIX 5L Administration Guide Version 1.3,  order number: SA22-7918-05 .

• The new plug-ins to manage a CSM cluster only appear in Web-based System Manager under the following conditions:
• The managing server must be at an AIX 5.2 level.
• The machine selected from the Web-based System Manager navigation area must be an AIX 5.2 machine configured as a CSM management server. At that point the new CSM cluster plug-ins are discovered and are available for use.
• Visual monitoring is supported in the Web-based System Manager navigation area for the children (which are the nodes defined in the CSM cluster) of the new CSM Nodes plug-in. This visual monitoring only occurs after the Nodes plug-in has been loaded/selected.
• Clicking on a Tips link for a CSM plug-in results in the wrong Java^TM help section being displayed. After clicking on the Tips link, click the Back arrow button in the Java^TM help and the correct help section will be displayed.

There is no compatibility with releases prior to: sysmgt.websm.rte 5.1.0.15

Managing a Remote Machine

The suggested minimum memory configuration to run a Web-based System Manager session is 512 MB. You may require additional memory if you run multiple sessions simultaneously, such as multiple Web-based System Manager sessions running the Monitoring plug-in. The minimum suggested clock speed of Intel-based machines is 1Ghz.

Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology (RSCT), which includes the Web-based System Manager Monitoring application, is contained in a separate software package, rsct.core, which is installed by default.

For more information about the Monitoring application, refer to the file: /usr/sbin/rsct/README/rsct.core.README.

Following are features that are new or have been modified from the previous release, and which are not included in the current product documentation.

• The Filter Dialog has been significantly changed. Using the Advanced tab you can now add more than 3 rules and you can choose whether the rules are combined using logical AND or logical OR. In addition, you can disable the filter without loosing the filter rules. The documentation currently states that you can have a filter from both tabs (Filter and Advanced), however this is incorrect. Your filter will be set to whatever rules were set on the last tab that either the Apply or OK button was pressed. Finally, the contains operator has been changed to the matches operator. The matches operator provides a more flexible pattern matching syntax than was provided by contains. See the next bullet, below.

• The pattern matching syntax in the Find and Filter Dialogs have changed to be more flexible. Now, in addition to performing a substring match,  the '*' wildcard character can be used to specify where characters can be ignored (similar to the shell).  In 5.1 a pattern of abc would match any string that contained abc within it. In 5.2, you can specify that a string begins with abc by using the pattern abc*.  You can use as many wildcard characters as you like. The character's case is ignored for the pattern match.

Examples of new 5.2 Find/Filter pattern syntax

Pattern	Effect
abc*	Match any string that begins with abc
*abc	Match any string that ends with abc
*abc*	Match any string that contains abc
abc	Match any string that contains abc
*a*b*c	Match any string that has the characters a, b and c in it and in that order. The string must end in c

Java^TM Web Start

• Beginning with this release (5.2.0.30), users of the Linux or Windows client now have the choice of using Java^TM Web Start instead of installing the client via InstallShield. The URL for downloading the remote client is: http://<hostname>/remote_client.html

  The page displayed will allow the following choices:

  InstallShield	This remote client is installed via an InstallShield wizard and it must be re-installed to obtain updates. This client is useful when running the Web-based System Manager over a broadband connection (cable modem or DSL), because updates to the console are not automatically downloaded.
  JavaTM Web Start	This remote client is loaded by JavaTM Web Start, which must be installed on the client system prior to installing the remote client. This version of the remote client will check for updates on the server every time it is invoked and download updates automatically.

  Installation of Java^TM Web Start on Linux

  • When using the Mozilla browser on Linux to download the remote client files, make sure you are using Mozilla 1.6 or later.
  • After selecting the Java^TM Web Start link from the browser, you will be prompted to install Java^TM Web Start (if it is not already on your system) before you can download the remote client. If it appears to hang the browser window, it is trying to open the rpm rather than download it. Go back to the URL and right-click on the link, then select Save Link Target As. . . and save the rpm to disk.
  • Once the image has been downloaded to the Linux system, run the command rpm -i  ibm-linux-jre.i386.rpm to install the IBM jre.
  • cd to /opt/IBMJava2-141/jre/bin and execute webstart_install.sh. After this step, Java^TM Web Start is installed and the browser is configured to handle the jnlp URLs.

  Installation of Java^TM Web Start on Windows

  • If Java^TM Web Start is not already installed on the Windows system, you will be prompted to install it. After it is installed and you have selected and installed the Windows remote client, the following steps are necessary to create the desktop shortcut and icons:
    • Open Java^TM Web Start and view the Preferences from the File menu. Click the Shortcut Options tab. The default for creating shortcuts is "prompt on the second launch". Keep this default setting and click OK.
    • Click View, then Downloaded Applications. Highlight "Web-based System Manager" within the Applications: Downloaded Applications box and press Start. Web-based System Manager will launch, creating the shortcuts.
    • The only supported Web Start configuration is with the supplied IBM JRE.

Accessibility Improvements using Windows Remote Client

• Several improvements to accessibility have been added. Most of these changes are transparent, but users may notice some minor changes in appearance or behavior:
  • Installation of the remote client now automatically installs the IBM Accessibility Speech Interface V1.2 and IBM ViaVoice TTS Runtime V6.740. This technology preview provides for a limited voicing capability of Web-based System Manager. In order to run with Voicing enabled, the startup file wsmsvk.bat sets the required environment variables and launches Web-based System Manager.
  • The startup file wsm.bat that starts Web-based System Manager without voicing turned on and wsmsvk.bat are located in the bin sub-directory of the Web-based System Manager install directory (normally C:\Program Files\websm\bin).
  • The desktop shortcut that was created above launches Web-based System Manager without voicing turned on. You can create a copy of that shortcut and change the startup file to wsmsvk.bat if you would like to be able to launch the voicing version of Web-based System Manager using a short-cut.
  • Read only fields can now receive focus. This was done to enable those fields to be voiced.
  • The number of mnemonics assigned to buttons, menu items, etc. has been reduced for the following reasons. The remaining mnemonics are consistent with IBM's accessibility requirements for mnemonics.
    • Previously, many non-standard mnemonics were used and have now been removed.
    • Large numbers of mnemonics were difficult to learn and presented numerous translation issues.
    • Compatibility problems were occurring because mnemonics changed with each release.
    • When managing several machines at different release levels, mnemonics for the same plug-in could differ for each machine/level.
  • More of Web-based System Manager is now keyboard navigable.
  • Better tracking of focus has been implemented.
  • Changes have been made in colors, font sizes, etc.
  • Web-based System Manager now supports the Windows 'Native' theme on the Windows client:
    • The 'Native' theme causes Web-based System Manager to inherit a number of desktop theme properties.
    • When you set your theme type to 'Native' and you subsequently run Web-based System Manager on a non-Windows client, your theme will be set to 'Classic'. As long as you don't change your theme (and save your preferences), Web-based System Manager will remember to set the theme back to 'Native' when you run again from a Windows client.
    • If you run an older version of the Web-based System Manager client and save your preferences, then any 'Native' theme setting is lost and will not be remembered the next time you launch Web-based System Manager using that preference file.
    • The windows theme will allow Web-based System Manager to pick up the font size and color choices of the desktop. Web-based System Manager must be restarted after changing themes.

Known Problems

Following are problems that have been identified and are being addressed. Current workarounds, recommendations, and problems identified after this version of the product is released will be posted to the Web-based System Manager Web Site.

General

• Viewing Remote Queue status using the All Print Queues view for AIX remote printers can inaccurately indicate a problem. Check the actual status of the queue from the command line by entering the following command: enq -q -P queue. If the command returns the status that the queue is ready, printing will function normally.
• There are known Java problems with using PC-Exceed that result in random size dialogs (and other problems). A suggested workaround is to (in Exceed):
set: Protocol->Enable Custom Vendor String
to: "eXcursion"
For further information, see Java bugs 4340199 & 4279670 at http://java.sun.com
• There may be a delay encountered between the time that the system name is selected in the navigation area and the username and password are requested. This is a performance issue and will be addressed in a future release.
• When connection problems occur with a Host, there may be a delay before feedback in the form of an error message is returned to the user. This is a performance issue that is being addressed.
• If the following message is encountered: The wizard script file, tguides/.../...sgs, was not found or could not be opened, there is an inconsistency between the managed machine and the managing server where the taskguides are not installed on both systems.
• Out of memory or out of virtual memory. You can change the heap size for out of memory problems by setting the Web-based System Manager environment variable W_HEAP_MAX_SIZE. The default maximum heap size is 1/2 of the physical memory of the machine with a maximum of 256MB. For example, to change the maximum heap size in AIX the user would need to export the following variable at the command line: export W_HEAP_MAX_SIZE=380m where m is megabytes. To set in gigabytes then export W_HEAP_MAX_SIZE=20g where g is gigabytes.
• Out of memeory may also occur if the hard limit of data area is reduced. To correct, run (as root user):
  ulimit -Hd unlimited

Management Environment

• Due to support for applet mode, a fully qualified host name is not equivalent to a non-fully qualified host name. For example, "foo" and "foo.austin.ibm.com" are not equivalent. A Java security exception would occur in applet mode if the InetAddress class was used to determine if "foo" and "foo.austin.ibm.com" are equivalent. Because of this, it is possible to have multiple entries for the same machine (differing in case or domain specification).

Remote Client Mode

• Supported Windows platforms are Windows 2000 Professional version and Windows XP Professional version.
• Supported Linux distributions are Red Hat Enterprise Version 3, Suse 8.0, Suse 8.1, Suse 8.2, and Suse 9.0 using desktops KDE and GNOME only.
• The popup menu (right mouse click) will in some contexts deselect all objects except the one under the cursor. The workaround is to use the pull-down menus from the toolbar instead of using a popup menu.
  

  Security for Remote Client Mode

  Web-based System Manager Remote Client security provides for secure operations in Remote Client mode.   You must install the Web-based System Manager Remote Client on your client system before you install Web-based System Manager Remote Client Security.

  To install Web-based System Manager Remote Client Security, you must first install the sysmgt.websm.security and/or sysmgt.websm.security-us filesets on a Web-based System Manager server. These filesets are available on the AIX Expansion Pack. The steps for downloading and installing Remote Client Security are similar to the procedure for the Remote Client:

  1. Enter the following web address in the client web browser: http://<hostname>/remote_client_security.html

     where <hostname> is the name of the Web-based System Manager server configured for Web-based System Manager Remote Client Security installation.

  2. If your remote client is a Windows system, click the Windows link that appears on the web page. This will download the setupsec.exe file to your client. If your remote client is a Linux system, click the Linux link that appears on the web page. This will download the setupsecl.exe file to your client.
  3. Run the downloaded file (setupsec.exe on Windows, setupsecl.exe on Linux) to start the installation wizard. To complete the installation, proceed through the installation wizard by clicking Next on each panel.

  To establish secure connections in Remote Client mode, you must copy the public key file (SM.pubkr) of the Certificate Authority you used to configure security on the server to the Remote Client codebase directory on your client system. Follow the instructions in the Web-based System Manager Administration guide for configuring Web-based System Manager security on your servers.
  

  Security for the Java^TM Web Start Client

  For the Webstart client, SSL support is automatically downloaded with the client if the Web-based System Manager security filesets (sysmgt.websm.security, sysmgt.websm.security-us) are installed on the system that you downloaded the client from. The certificate authority's public key (SMPubkr.zip) is also automatically downloaded from the /usr/websm/codebase directory of this server. When you define the certificate authority using the Web-based System Manager security configuration application, the CA's public key is written to SMpubkr.zip and SM.pubkr in /var/websm/security/tmp. You need to copy SMpubkr.zip to the codebase directory (/usr/websm/codebase) of the server that you downloaded the webstart client from. You will notice that when you install the security filesets, an empty SMpubkr.zip is created in the codebase directory. This is necessary to avoid error messages during the webstart client download before you have copied the SMpubkr.zip for the CA you define. There is a script, /usr/websm/bin/wsmwebstartsslcfg which creates the empty SMpubkr.zip and sets the links to the jnlp files for downloading the appropriate SSL support. You can run this script to restore these links to a sane state if you think they are incorrect.

Applet Mode

• Netscape 6 is not supported. Use Netscape 4.79 or Internet Explorer 5.x (or newer).
• The following problems have been identified and are being addressed:
  • Applet Mode does not run with Netscape 4.79 on Windows XP.
  • Applet Mode does not run on a Pentium 4 machine.
• When the  javahelp system is invoked from applet mode,  a dialog appears with the message: "An applet would like to print.  Is this OK?"  In order to dismiss this dialog press either "Yes" or "No".  This is a javahelp system bug that will be fixed in an upcoming update.
• The initial load time is significant, particularly when the class files are not cached. Setting your browser's cache size to a large value (10M or more) will help on subsequent launches of Web-based System Manager.
• If you encounter difficulty using applet mode, review the following document: http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.3/troubleshooting.faq.html
• Problems have been found with the proxy configuration in Internet Explorer 5 that prevent use of Web-based System Manager. If IE's proxy configuration is not correctly specified, a "load: class <X> not found" error will appear in IE's status bar when you try to access wsm.html in applet mode. You may get this error even though IE appears to function correctly with regular http files.

If you experience this problem, carefully review your proxy settings. To view your proxy settings in IE 5, select:
Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings.

Notice that you can specify a single proxy server that will supply the needed configuration info for every protocol (i.e. http, ftp, etc.) or, through the "Advanced" button, you can specify a proxy server for each protocol individually.

Make certain that if you specify servers for each protocol separately, they are correct.

• Problems such as screen flicker can occur in some situations while using applet mode. The problem seems to be a configuration problem of the browser, or operating system, since it does not consistently give trouble on all similarly configured machines. If you encounter such problems, you should consider changing browsers.
• Currently the Web-based System Manager requires the 1.3.1_04 Java plug-in. The plug-in should be automatically installed if it is not on your system already. This version can be found at http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se/1.3.1_04/index.html
• Web-based System Manager may be unviewable in applet mode after installing java 1.4.x on the PC (see bugs ids 4904444 and 4783788 at the java site for details - http://developer.java.sun.com/servlet/SessionServlet?url=/developer/bugParade/index.jshtml ).

License agreements

• In AIX 5.2.0.30 the Web-based System Manager Software task "Update Software to the Latest Level" and the Network Installation Management task includes a new option to accept license agreements. This option is not available on earlier releases, so if you are updating a previous level of AIX and the update includes licensed products, you will not be able to complete the update using the  Web-based System Manager. Instead, you should use SMIT, i.e. enter "smitty update_all" on the command line.

Other Useful Information

See: http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/wsm/ for information about Web-based System Manager.

Vendors needing information about how to integrate their product with Web-based System Manager can contact their IBM representative for more details.
 

Hardware Management Console (HMC)
 

The HMC, or Hardware Management Console is the controlling hardware for the eServer p690 system. The HMC system provides the basic functionality needed to configure and manage the eServer p690 system. The HMC provides partition management, service, and problem determination software for maintaining the eServer p690 system. For more information about the HMC see the publication: IBM Hardware Management Console Installation and Operations Guide,  order number:  SA38-0590-07.

Hardware Management Console and Web-based System Manager are products of International Business Machines (IBM) Inc.

Java^TM and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both.

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