Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!pacbell.com!decwrl!sgi!shinobu!odin!odin.corp.sgi.com!gold From: gold@sgi.com (Michael Gold) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi Subject: Re: framemaker installation Message-ID: Date: 6 Mar 91 17:48:58 GMT References: <1991Mar6.215418.6815@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News) Distribution: usa Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 60 In-Reply-To: xxwrp@picasso.lerc.nasa.gov's message of 6 Mar 91 21:54:18 GMT In article <1991Mar6.215418.6815@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> xxwrp@picasso.lerc.nasa.gov (Bill Palenske) writes: Preface: I don't know much about how FrameMaker functions. Pardon any malapropisms. S'Okay. I'll try not to botch the reply... It's been suggested to me that I install FrameMaker (SGI) on a non-SGI platform that serves as a disk farm ( Call this machine DF ). I gather that the impetus behind this suggestion was that DF would then function as our license server. The following quote from the release notes seems to be pretty clear that this cannot be done. You are correct; the license server process *must* run on an IRIS. I guess then that a followup suggestion may be: why not put the FrameMaker software on DF and nfs mount it on some SGI which would function as our license server. I suppose this could be made to work. I'm not enthusiastic about this proposal. It seems like a lot of bother. Moreover, it would probably considerably complicate matters vis-a-vis host ids and getting passwords. This would work. The only potential problem is when you actually license the software as superuser; by default root does not have superuser priveledge on an NFS filesystem. But this can certainly be worked around in a number of ways. The problem is we have a disk space crunch on most of our SGIs ( we're looking at getting some more disks, but that is quite a ways down the line. ) I do have one SGI that has enough space and which I would like to make the license server, but it is frequently used for special processing and I am reluctant to take too many cycles away from that. My question here is: how does the license server work? Is it a deamon which will be quiescent/sleeping most of the time or what? The license server process is indeed a daemon; it does not use many cycles. When a FrameMaker process is active, it pings the license server daemon every so often (I believe the interval is 30 seconds). The most intense work is done when checking out or checking in a license, and I'd be suprised if you noticed the activity. Finally, from reading the release notes it is not clear to me how _client_ machines are set up to use FrameMaker. Does one nfs mount things from the license server, install actual binaries on clients, what? Yes, the easiest thing is to mount the frame directory (i.e. /usr/frame) from the server onto the client, and then run $FMHOME/bin/fminstall on the client machine to set up a few things, like /etc/magic and WorkSpace. Be sure to mount with the -nointr option, or SIGALRM's will interrupt NFS reads, I think. (This may no longer be necessary; perhaps some NFS guru can shed some light.) -- Michael I. Gold You go your way, I'll go mine, Silicon Graphics Inc. I don't care if we get there on time, Internet: gold@sgi.com Everybody's searching for something they say, Voice: (415) 335-1709 I'll get my kicks on the way...