File Name: dsa_installable_readme.txt ****************************************************************** | | | IBM(R) Dynamic System Analysis (DSA) Installable Edition, | | Version 1.20.40 | | | | (C) Copyright International Business Machines Corporation | | 2004, 2005. All rights reserved. | | | | US Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication | | or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with | | IBM Corp. | | | | Note: Before using this information and the product it | | supports, read the general information under | | "NOTICES" in this document. | | | | This readme file is provided only in English. You can | | obtain the latest version of the readme file from the IBM | | Support Web site. | | | | Updated 16 August 2005 | ****************************************************************** CONTENTS -------- 1.0 Overview 1.1 Product overview 1.2 Operating-system support 1.3 Server support 1.4 Other prerequisites for systems running Windows 1.5 Compatibility with ServeRAID Manager 1.6 Compatibility with Network Virtual Teaming software 1.7 Compatibility with UpdateXpress 2.0 Change history 3.0 Installing Dynamic System Analysis 3.1 Performing an attended DSA installation 3.2 Performing an unattended DSA installation 3.3 Installing DSA using Remote Deployment Manager (RDM) 4.0 Uninstalling Dynamic System Analysis 5.0 Running Dynamic System Analysis 5.1 Running DSA from the Start menu 5.2 Running DSA from a command prompt 5.3 Running DSA from IBM Director Console 6.0 Using DSA command-line options 6.1 Sending DSA output to IBM xSeries Service and Support 6.2 Using DSA with UpdateXpress 7.0 Accessing and viewing DSA output 7.1 Naming convention used for output files and directories 7.2 Viewing a compressed collection file 7.3 HTML files created by DSA 8.0 Known problems and workarounds 9.0 Support Web sites 10.0 Notices 11.0 Third-party license terms and conditions, notices and information 11.1 zlib software 11.2 boost software 1.0 OVERVIEW ------------- This readme file provides information about IBM Dynamic System Analysis (DSA) Installable Edition, version 1.20. 1.1 Product overview --------------------- IBM DSA Installable Edition is a system information collection and analysis tool that is used by IBM xSeries(R) Service and Support personnel to aid in the diagnosis of system problems. This software can be used while the operating system is running. DSA collects information about the following aspects of a system: o System configuration o Installed packages o Kernel Modules o Network interfaces and settings o Performance data and details for running processes o Hardware inventory, including PCI information o Vital product data, firmware, and basic input/output system (BIOS) information o Drive Health Information o ServeRAID configuration o Event logs for the operating system, ServeRAID controllers, and service processors Additionally, DSA creates a merged log that includes events from all collected logs. DSA also can compare the firmware configurations on a server to those on an UpdateXpress CD or CD image. For more information, see "6.2 Using DSA with UpdateXpress." The system information is collected into a compressed XML file that can be sent to IBM Service. Additionally, you can view the system information through optionally generated HTML Web pages. For more information, see "7.0 ACCESSING AND VIEWING DSA OUTPUT." If you want to run DSA without installing it, use DSA Portable Edition, which is designed to fit on removable media such as a CD or USB key. 1.2 Operating-system support ----------------------------- DSA 1.20 is supported on the following 32-bit Linux operating systems: o Red Hat(TM) Enterprise Linux 3 (Updates 1-5), AS, ES, & WS o SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (Base Level, SP 1, SP 2) Note: There are unique DSA executables for each of the supported Linux distributions. The SLES 9 version of DSA is not compatible with RHEL 3, and vice versa. Verify that the correct DSA executables have been obtained before running DSA. 1.3 Server support ------------------- DSA is supported on the following xSeries(R) servers: x205 (8480) x206 (8482) x206 (8487) x225 (8647) x225 (8649) x226 (8648) x226 (8488) x235 (8671) x236 (8841) x255 (8685) x260 (8865) x305 (8673) x306 (8836) x306 (8489) x335 (8676) x336 (8837) x345 (8670) x346 (8840) x360 (8686) x365 (8861) x365 (8862) x366 (8863) x366 (8874) x440 (8687) x445 (8870) x460 (8872) (Single Node) DSA is also supported on the following eServer(TM) products: e325 (8835) e326 (8836) e326 (8848) BladeCenter(TM)(HS20) (8678) BladeCenter(HS20) (8832) BladeCenter(HS20) (8843) BladeCenter(HS40) (8839) BladeCenter(LS20) (8850) In addition, DSA is supported on the following IntelliStation systems: A10 (6224) A10 (6217) Z20 (6223) Z20 (6227) M20 (6220) M20 (6230) M30 (6225) M30 (6228) 1.4 Other prerequisites for systems running Linux ---------------------------------------------------- Installation of DSA requires 15MB of disk space. DSA requires 50 to 100MB of available memory during the data collection process. The amount of memory required for this process depends on the size of the logs being collected from the system. To view the information that is collected by DSA, you must use either Internet Explorer 6.0 (Service Pack 1 or later) or Mozilla 1.40 or later. Either browser requires 30 to 100MB of available memory to display DSA data. The amount of memory required depends on the size of the logs being viewed. In order to collect Broadcom(TM) Ethernet firmware levels, the Broadcom(TM) NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Drivers must be installed. The tg3 driver provided by default in current Linux distributions does not export this information. These drivers are available for download from the IBM Support website at: http://www.ibm.com/support In order to collect LSI Logic(TM) 1020/1030 SCSI Controller & RAID information, the "mptctl" driver must be loaded. Run "lsmod" and verify that "mptctl" is loaded before running DSA. In order to collect Service Processor logs, configuration, and environmental data the appropriate Service Processor driver must be installed. These drivers are available from the IBM Support website. DSA requires libcurl to be installed in order transfer data collections to the IBM Support site via FTP. Use of the UpdateXpress comparison analysis feature requires that an UpdateXpress CD be available for the system on which the analysis is performed. UpdateXpress versions 4.01 and later are supported. Notes: o The UpdateXpress comparison analysis feature will only support System Firmware comparisons including BIOS, Diagnostics, and Service Processor. Device drivers will not be compared in this release, due to limitations with the UpdateXpress CD. 1.5 Compatibility with ServeRAID Manager ----------------------------------------- DSA Installable Edition 1.20 can collect ServeRAID log information from ServeRAID Manager 6.10 and later versions. DSA cannot collect information from the following ServeRAID controllers: o ServeRAID-7t SATA RAID o ServeRAID-7e (Adaptec HostRAID) o ServeRAID-7k o ServeRAID 8i Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Controller 1.6 Compatibility with Network Virtual Teaming software ----------------------------------------- DSA Portable Edition 1.20 is supported for use with the following Network Virtual Teaming software: o Linux Bonding versions 2.4.1, 2.6.0, & 2.6.1 1.7 Compatibility with UpdateXpress ------------------------------------ DSA Installable Edition 1.20 is supported for use with UpdateXpress 4.01 and later versions. 2.0 CHANGE HISTORY ------------------- This section provides information about product updates and features. 2.1 Dynamic System Analysis 1.20 --------------------------------- o Support for 32-bit Linux distributions. 2.2 Dynamic System Analysis 1.10 ------------------------------- o Added data collection capabilities for service processor TCP/IP configuration, service processor dial-up configuration, service processor status, video adapter, and display settings. o Created additional ways to view collected information. o Added BladeCenter data collection capabilities for: - Broadcom Virtual Teaming Software support and information - Intel PROSet support and information - IDE drive SMART data - Onboard LSI RAID controller data o Improved support for ServeRAID 6 and earlier ServeRAID systems. o Implemented optional full system event log retrieval for ISMP and IPMI systems. o Increased number and type of systems supported. o Improved usability of HTML output from DSA. 2.3 Dynamic System Analysis 1.02 ------------------------------- DSA, Version 1.02 included the following changes: o Fixed an issue that prevented IPMI event log data collection in DSA 1.01 on machines with IPMI BMC implementations. Affected systems will have this message in the DSA Error log: Error: Plugin IPMISEL threw exception fdrStatusInvalidDateTime 2.4 Dynamic System Analysis 1.01 ------------------------------- DSA, Version 1.01 included the following changes: o Fixed an issue that would cause the HTML generation to fail in version 1.0 when the /v option is used in conjunction with the /i option. The following error message was reported by the tool: ERROR: PopulateContainerFromFile returned exception code fdrStatusInvalidDateTime. 2.5 Dynamic System Analysis 1.00 ------------------------------- First release. 3.0 INSTALLING DYNAMIC SYSTEM ANALYSIS --------------------------------------- DSA Installable Edition is installed on one or more supported servers. 3.1 Performing a DSA installation -------------------------------------------- Complete the following steps to perform a installation of DSA Installable Edition on a system running Linux. These steps are for a typical installation. Note: The operating-system account that is used to install DSA must have local Administrator authority. 1. Download the DSA Installable Edition rpm file. 2. Install the DSA Installable Edition rpm for RHEL3 using the following commandline: rpm -ivh dsa-rhel-1.20-1.rpm 3. The install will proceed and place the package in the /opt/IBM/DSA directory. 4.0 UNINSTALLING DYNAMIC SYSTEM ANALYSIS ----------------------------------------- Complete the following steps to perform an uninstallation of DSA. 1. Open a linux command shell. 2. Uninstall the DSA Installable Edition rpm for SLES9 using the following commandline: rpm -e dsa-sles-1.20-1 3. The uninstall will proceed and remove the package from the /opt/IBM/DSA directory. 5.0 RUNNING DYNAMIC SYSTEM ANALYSIS ------------------------------------ DSA Installable Edition can be run from a linux shell prompt. 5.1 Running DSA from Linux -------------------------------------- The DSA executable file is collectall. It is installed in the following directory: /opt/IBM/DSA Complete the following steps to run DSA from a linux shell: 1. Change to the /opt/IBM/DSA directory. 2. Type ./collectall 3. (Optional) Type DSA command-line options after the executable file name. For more information, see "6.0 USING DSA COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS." DSA will begin collection. When DSA is completed, collectall exists. For information about the DSA results, see "7.0 ACCESSING AND VIEWING DSA OUTPUT." If you ran DSA without any options, DSA collects information into one compressed XML file that can be sent to IBM Service. For information about sending the file to IBM Service, see "6.1 Sending DSA output to IBM Service and Support." 6.0 USING DSA COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS ----------------------------------- The command-line syntax in this document uses the following conventions: o Options are shown with a hyphen (-). o Options are shown as lowercase, but are not case-sensitive. o Variables are shown in angle brackets. DSA has the following command-line options: -? Display help for DSA command-line options. -h Display help for DSA command-line options. -b Run in batch mode. -c Create the directory specified by the -d option, if it doesn't already exist. -d Place DSA output files in the specified directory rather than in the default location, which is the /var/log/IBM_Support directory. If not specified with -c, the directory must already exist or the command-line client exits with an error message. -f Retrieve the full ISMP log if present. If the machine does not have an ISMP service processor, this option is ignored. You must stop the IBM Director service (twgipc) to collect ISMP logs from a system with an ISMP service processor and IBM Director installed. -i Read input from rather than collecting data from the local server. If the file does not exist, the command-line client exits with an error message. -t Transfer collected data to IBM Service and Support. -u Specify location of UpdateXpress CD or CD Image for use with the UpdateXpress Firmware Analysis plugin. -v Create HTML output files. -text Create an ASCII Text output file. -x Do not create a compressed XML file. All options must be separated with one or more spaces. You must use a fully-qualified path name with the -d and -i options. For example, to run DSA and generate HTML output files that can be viewed with a browser: ./collectall -v To run DSA, and create HTML output files in the directory /usr/foo/DSA_Output, run this command: ./collectall -v -c -d /usr/foo/DSA_Output DSA has the following environment variable options: DSA_INCLUDE where is a space, comma, or semi-colon separated list of plugins to include when collectall is run. The basename of the plugin is used. DSA_EXCLUDE where is a space, comma, or semi-colon separated list of plugins to exclude when collectall is run. The basename of the plugin is used. Note: DSA_INCLUDE and DSA_EXCLUDE are mutually exclusive. 6.1 Sending DSA output to IBM xSeries Service and Support ---------------------------------------------------------- Use the -t option to send the collected data to IBM xSeries Service and Support. DSA uses File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to transfer the compressed XML output file to IBM Service. For example, the following command collects data and sends it to IBM Service: ./collectall.exe -t If you already have a compressed XML output file from DSA that you want to send to IBM Service, run DSA from a command prompt and use the /i option with the /t option. The /i option requires that you specify a fully qualified path name to the compressed XML output file from DSA. For example, the following command sends the specified output file to IBM Service: ./collectall.exe -t -i /var/log/IBM_Support/.xml.gz where is the name of a compressed XML file that was previously created by DSA. For example, an output file could be named 86865RZ_23D0600_20041004-190308.xml.gz. 6.2 Using DSA with UpdateXpress -------------------------------- Use the -u option to designate a fully qualified path to an UpdateXpress CD or CD image. When you do so, DSA compares the device driver and firmware configurations on the server to those that were extracted from the specified UpdateXpress CD or CD image. When the -v option is used to create HTML files, you can view the results of the comparison from the DSA home page. To do so, click "UpdateXpress Comparison" in the Analysis category in the left pane of the DSA home page. For more information about the DSA home page, see "7.3 HTML files created by DSA." 7.0 ACCESSING AND VIEWING DSA OUTPUT ------------------------------------- By default, DSA output is created in the /var/log/IBM_Support directory. Use the -d option to specify a different output directory. When DSA is run from a command prompt with no command-line options, it creates only a compressed XML file in the IBM_Support directory. When DSA is run with the -v option, it creates a subdirectory that contains HTML files that you can view with a Web browser. 7.1 Naming convention used for output files and directories ------------------------------------------------------------ DSA uses the following naming convention for compressed XML files and for subdirectories that it creates: __-