Re-building a FingerPost system

It is important that your FIP systems are identical. Generally as long as the systems have been set-up correctly and that good practices have been adhered to, the systems should be the same.

Good practice includes editing parameter files using either the command ‘ipvi’ (a FIP program ‘wrapped’ around the Unix command ‘vi’) or ‘Tables Administration’ in W4.

It is also important that if you create a new process on your primary system, you should add the same process to the secondary system.

To run a FIP system you need a licence which is stored in a file called ‘fiplick.xxxxxx’ in the directory /fip/fix where ‘xxxxxx’ is the hostname of the system e.g.

cat /fip/fix/fiplick.xxxxxx
;       Fip Licence for xxxxxx 193.139.33.54
|Z2jeeggl konpp MecRj ihooV rbhOj f|

It is important that you store both licences for the primary and the secondary FIP on each machine.

Furthermore it is useful if you keep a copy of the tasks that are scheduled to run on each system e.g.

crontab –l > /fip/local/crontab.xxxxxx

where ‘xxxxxx’ is once again the hostname. You should copy this file to the companion system either using the remote copy command (rcp) or ‘ipvi’ e.g.

rcp –p crontab.xxxxxx yyyyyy:/fip/local

where ‘yyyyyy’ is the hostname of the companion system or

ipvi –x crontab.xxxxxx

Using the –x switch tells ‘ipvi’ to copy the file to the systems listed in /fip/tables/sys/TABLES_HOSTS, but the file is not actually edited.

We generally recommend that you back-up the following directories:-

/fip/bin          - programs
/fip/fix          - licences
/fip/help         - help files
/fip/info         - information files
/fip/local        - miscellaneous scripts
/fip/sfftables    - parameter files for the suite of ‘sff’ programs
/fip/tables       - parameter files
/fip/web          - W4 cgi’s and templates

The simplest way to do this is using the Unix ‘tar’ (tape archive) command. e.g.

cd /fip         - change directory to /fip
mkdir zsav      - make the directory /fip/zsav if it doesn’t already exist

tar cf “zsav/fipbackup-`hostname`-`date +%d%b%Y`” ./bin ./fix ./help ./info ./local ./sfftables ./tables ./web

- If the hostname of the FIP system is ‘fip1’ and the date is the 4th August 2004, this command will create a ‘tar’ file called ‘fipbackup-fip1-04Aug2004’ in the directory /fip/zsav

compress zsav/fipbackup-fip1-04Aug2004

- compress the newly created ‘tar’ file, which if successful will add a ‘.Z’ extension to the file name

It is good practice to copy your backup file to the companion system (fip2) e.g.

rcp –p zsav/fipbackup-fip1-04Aug2004.Z fip2:/fip/zsav

The same procedure should be carried out on the companion system, so that both systems have a backup copy of each other. How often you create these backup files depends on how much the system is being modified, but we recommend at least once per month and especially after any alterations to the systems.

Should one of your FIP systems crash and you have to start from the beginning, the following steps should get you up and running again.

Either make the directory /fip or link it to another directory where you want to store the FIP system e.g.

cd / ; mkdir fip

Or

cd / ; ln –s /aaa/bbb/ccc fip

where /aaa/bbb/ccc is the directory where the FIP system is to be installed.

Once the system has been re-built, create the user who will be running the Fip system e.g. fip, fipadm. This can be done using the ‘useradd’ command e.g.

useradd -c “FingerPost Administrator” -d /fip -g GGG -s /bin/csh -u UUU fip

where UUU and GGG are the user and group ID numbers, which you should obtain from the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group respectively.

The premise here is that the two systems are identical bar the files that are listed in the file /fip/tables/sys/TABLES_DIFF_FILES

Notes and comments