Installing Big Sister

Paths to files

Big Sister puts its binaries and data in specific directories. Depending on your installation the paths pointing to these directories will differ. If you build Big Sister from source you are free to move most of these directories to the location you prefer. The Windows packages allow you to relocate the whole Big Sister package (the Root directory) but not each of the directories with special meanings. The RPM packages come with predefined Big Sister root-directory {ROOT} as well as other predefined paths (given in the table below) which fit nicely into the the filesystem layout of common Linux distributions.

Table 1.1. paths to files

WhatDefault (when build from source)WindowsRPM / Debian
Root/usr/local/lib/bsC:\bigsis/usr/share/bigsister
Binaries{Root}/bin{Root}\bin{Root}/bin
Agent Binaries{Root}/uxmon{Root}\bin{Root}/uxmon
Web Pages{Root}/www{Root}\www/var/lib/bigsister/www
CGI Scripts{Root}/cgi{Root}\cgi/var/lib/bigsister/cgi
RW-Files{Root}/var{Root}\var/var/lib/bigsister
configuration files{Root}/etc{Root}\etc/etc/bigsister
Release Notes and HOWTO/usr/local/lib/bigsister/doc /usr/share/doc/packages/bigsister
Default User Accountbs bigsis
Big Sister URL/bs/bigsis/bigsis
CGI URL/cgi//cgi//bigsis/cgi/

The Big Sister- and the CGI-url are not physical paths - rather they are the path where the Big Sister HTML-Display and its CGI programs appear when accessed from the outside world via the web server.

Installation from sources

When installing Big Sister from the source package you will additionally need at least a working copy of the Make utility and the Bourne shell. This means that you will probably not be able to install Big Sister from source directly on a Windows machine and this section therefore just assumes you are installing on a Unix box.

Before you can proceed you should decide where to store your various Big Sister files (see section ** ). If this is your first installation it might be a good idea to just use the defaults. You should also consider a few points:

  • The Web-Pages directory must be accessible via a web browser, probably you will run a web server for this purpose

  • Other directories than the Web-Pages directory should not be accessible via a web server for security reasons

  • Big Sister will excessively write to the Web-Pages and var directories. They should be located on a fast drive.

  • Config files are split into two directories: the adm- and etc- directory. The idea behind this is to keep files shared (e.g. via software distribution) between different installations in etc- and the files local to the respective machine in the adm directory.

Usually you will install Big Sister under its own user account for security reasons. Big Sister daemons will run under this account. Before you can install Big Sister you have to create this account.

Are you still with us? Well, then we can start the installation. Unpack your Big Sister source package, log in as root and change directory into your package. Now you can run the configuration procedure by changing directory into the Big Sister package directory and run

 ./configure

Configure will try to use reasonable defaults, but it is a good idea to browse through its configuration options and look for things you want to have configured differently. Please run

./configure --help

to see all the supported options. Especially useful options in my eyes are:

 --prefix=[dir]
                    (install Big Sister elsewhere than in /usr/local)
                

--with-user=[login]
                    (use some other user than the default "bs")
                

 --with-cgi=[URL]
                    (the URL of the directory your browser will find the Big Sister CGIs under "/cgi")
                

 --with-url=[URL]
                    (the URL of the directory your browser will find the "www" directory of Big Sister (defaults to "/bs")
                

The RPM / Debian packages for instance are built using the following configure options:

./configure --enable-fhs --with-user=bigsis --with-cgi=/bigsis/cgi --with-url=/bigsis

Once you have run configure and you are happy with the configuration it generated you can run

make install

install the whole Big Sister package or

make install-agent; make install-modules

just install the agent, or

make install-server; make install-modules

just install the server.

Note that Big Sister allows installation of additional plugins. Many features even of the official distribution are implemented in their own plugin. The additional install-modules target used above ensures that all the plugins being included in the distribution are installed as well.

During the installation process a Big Sister boot script will be placed in the "init" directory of your system (/etc/init.d, /sbin/init.d, /etc/rc.d/init.d, whatever else). It's up to you to enable this script by placing the necessary links in the rc*.d directories or using chkconfig (if your system supports this).

Installing Big Sister from the RPM-packages

Fresh install

There is not much of a difference between the installation of an agent node and a Big Sister Server. In fact they differ only in two files located at /etc/bigsister. A Big Sister Server always needs the bb-display.cfg file to make it feel like a server. Agent node always need the uxmon-net file. The start script /etc/init.d/bigsister checks which file is present and starts the required deamons. In order to avoid any confusion and accidental installation of several servers in one network, the base rpm contains none of the above mentioned configuration files. The installation process using the RPMs is as follows: first you install the base package containing all the binaries, scripts and so on. Afterwards you install an additional RPM package containing the required configuration file to make your base installation a server or an agent node.

The following guidelines assume that you are using the rpm command line interface and not any GUI like gnorpm or others.If you are doing a fresh install,

rpm -i bigsister-[some rev. number].rpm

should do the job and install the base package. Afterwards you should use

rpm -i bigsister-agent-[some rev. number].rpm

to install an agent node or

rpm -i bigsister-server-[some rev. number].rpm

to make it a Big Sister server.

Upgrading from previous versions

[Note]Note

Please read the Release Notes of every new version before doing an upgrade.

Updating Big Sister is usually as simple as doing a

rpm -Uhv bigsister-[some rev. number].rpm

If your previous installation was done from the sources, a

 make

with the same arguments you originally used should do the job. Files that are user-editable (config files, etc.) won't get overwritten, binaries will though.

[Warning]Warning

Some things you should be aware of:

  • never install Big Sister for running as a different user to your previous version (well, you'll have to do a 'chown' manually in this case)!

  • config files are usually compatible between releases. Anyway if you'd like to use new features you'll usually have to update your config files of course. And of course config files for newer releases won't necessarily work with older releases.

  • it's always a good idea to back up a working Big Sister installation before upgrading

  • never upgrade an installation from sources with an rpm and the other way around!

Installing Big Sister on Debian

Download vs. APT

The current version of Big Sister is always available via two ways: the deb packages are available for download on the Big Sister web server like every other package. Those who prefer using APT or one of its derivatives may wish to directly put the line

deb http://software.graeff.com/debian-graeff stable main

into their /etc/apt/sources.list file. You can then install Big Sister using

apt-get update
apt-get install bigsister-server bigsister-agent

or any other tool similiar to apt like aptitude, synaptic and the like.

If you prefer downloading the .deb-Package from the download server then you will install Big Sister from the downloaded packages with the command

dpkg -i bigsister_[some rev. number].deb

and one of or both

dpkg -i bigsister-agent_[some rev. number].deb
dpkg -i bigsister-server_[some rev. number].deb

Installing Windows binary

The Big Sister package for Windows has undergone massive changes during its history. At the time this document was written the first test-release of an MSI (Windows Installer) version of Big Sister was available. In future this will be the way binary distributions for Windows will be made.

In order to install the MSI package you download the package file and double-click it when being logged in with administrator priviledges. The Windows installer will start and present you a few options. The package will automatically register Big Sister as a service. However, the necessary configuration files are all installed as files with the extension .default. You have to browse through the adm directory and copy the default files into their active pendant.

During installation you will be asked if the Big Sister Agent should be run under the Administrator or LocalSystem account. The user priviledges of the LocalSystem account prevent the agent from accessing some network resources like mapped network drives. The Administrator account is less limited in this respect and might be the preferred choice if you need the agent to run health checks like the file access bandwidth.

If you are installing some non-MSI distribution please follow the instructions in the release notes accompanying the distribution or on the Big Sister web server.