ZLM7 building the server

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'Building your first ZLM7 Server'

Contents

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Hardware, Software, Packages

These are recommendations from my own lab and demo use of ZENworks 7 Linux Management; your mileage may vary (and all other disclaimers)

Make sure you read the hardware and software requirements

Again - my build is:

SLES 9

  • minimal system (no X)
  • + glib2
  • + gettext
  • + python

then I add SLES 9 SP2 from CD.

You could also install using AutoYaST.

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Filesystems and Partitioning

The Package Universe (or package repository, pkg-repo) is stored on /var.

I always create a new partition for /var, maybe even for /var/opt/novell/pkg-repo. I have had great success with xfs (it's fast and optimised for this kind of thing). Personally I have had a few issues with both ext3 and reiserfs.

My current rule of thumb is around 5-10GB per distro. My live server is mirroring a lot of data - I've got a 50GB /var.

There is no religion about filesystems - I've found xfs to be reliable for me under the package repository for RCE2, ZLM6.x and now ZLM7.

An example: 

swap                         2GB   swap
/                           10GB   ext3
/var/opt/novell/pkg-repo   100GB   xfs
/home                       10GB   ext3

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increase your inodes

This is culled from a number of sources: 

/etc/sysctl.conf

# Reduces the amount of work the TCP stack does.
net.ipv4.tcp_stack = 0
# The number of inodes (fs.inode-nr) available to the Linux kernel should be 3-
4 times
# greater than the fs.file-max parameter
fs.inode-nr = 128000
# Maximum number of file handles that can open at a given time (default=4096)
fs.file-max = 64000

To apply these settings:

chkconfig boot.sysctl on

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X or no X

Nothing within ZLM7 requires X on the server. Keep your servers clean and install without.

There are a few installation points for a non-X server - but I find the box is lean and mean without a GUI.

All adminstration can still be done via SSH and the ZENworks Control Center.

Note: there are a couple of cosmetic bugs when running with no X server - fixed in a hot patch; contact Novell Support.

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ZENworks 7 Linux Management

Here is the link to the full ZENworks 7 Linux Management Cook Book

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