remote upgrade (not enough space)

[alanlevy]

Our netbackup group is unable to push out the new 7.7 version to my 150+ linux servers, running 7.1.4.

According to the netbackup folks here, you need at least 1G of free space in /tmp. None of my servers have that kind of free space in /tmp. All of our servers have plenty of space in /usr. That has been our methodology of building servers.

Is there any kind of workaround here to get netbackup upgraded ?

[Nicolai]

Hi 

Setting NB_TMPDIR=/usr/openv/tmp is the trick you are looking fore

On Unix systems, when applying 7.5.0.x patches, if insufficient space exists in /tmp, the patch process will abort leaving a master or media server with only the client binaries installed.

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000076532

[alanlevy]

Thanks for the answer.

Where and how is this variable set ?

This is a remote upgrade initiated by the master netbackup process (I'm not familiar with the admin part of this, I am only a user with 150+ servers running netbackup 7.1.4).

Does the admin have to set this or do I have to somehow do this on all of my servers ?

[Nicolai]

Yes - bring the tech note to the master server admin. Its a variable in the update_clients scripts he/she is running.

Version 7.1 is old by now and may not have the NB_TMPDIR variable.

In that case you can use this (unsupported) hack :

http://www.mass.dk/netbackup-quick-hints/alternate-file-location-using-install_client_files/

[alanlevy]

I was just told by our netbackup group that this won't work in my situation. Here's their response:

Among the several tests we have done, this was one… Unfortunately it does not apply for remote installs but for local ones(one by one basis).

 Option 2 from same TN will work for remote upgrades though, it was tested successfully and it would work for unattended upgrades of as many servers as needed.

 As I mentioned, I continue to look for a workaround to address remote upgrade for servers with less than 1GB of space in /tmp directory.

[Nicolai]

This will work, else they are not co-operative

Open the update_clients script, search for TMPDIR=/tmp (in 7.7.3 this is line 478), change this directory to something else with space enough (e.g. /var/tmp). Run the script to update your clients and revert the change back.

Somthing else - Netbackup 7.1 will be unsupported as of Feburary 2017. Time to upgrade !

[alanlevy]

Thanks for your answers but they refuse to make these changes.I guess I'll have to manually upgrade all of my servers. Bummer.

[Nicolai]

And while you are at it, add space in /tmp :)

[Genericus]

Have them EDIT the script on the master server, and update the path for that one variable from /tmp to /var/tmp.

Just setting the variable before running the script will not work.

 FYI - I found on my AIX systems, that running this script, and failing due to lack of space, left the client netbackup STOPPED - so backups will fail!      WHAT A FEATURE!

Please check and make sure that NetBackup client processes are running.

Either expand /tmp ( you may need to set it as large as 4GB ) or update the script.

[Mike_Gavrilov]

If you have to install client packages manually and your Linux servers are RedHat, Oracle  Linux, SUSE and so on (that use rpm-packages) when you can extract  pakages from CLIENTS2-archive (this is an official way and it's described in Installation Guide for 7.7.3) but istead of coping you can create a repository for those rpms and  install everything much faster (if you have Satellite server you can do it mostly automatically ).Or you can enjoy the process and do it absolutely manually client by client :)