Preparing the operating system

To prepare the operating system for installation, you edit the hosts and network files, enable the locale on each server, and enable IPv6 for AIX and Linux.

Before you begin

You only need to perform this task for first time installations, not upgrades. This task requires that you be familiar with the following:

UNIX files, tools, and concepts: Examples of UNIX tools include the /etc/host and /etc/sysconfig/network files, vi editor, and network-related commands such as ip and ifconfig. See your operating system documentation for more information.
Networking concepts: Some examples of networking concepts include layers, protocols, interfaces, Domain Name System (DNS), and so forth.
IPv4 configuration: Having background in IPv4 configuration will help you to understand IPv6 configuration.
IPv6 concepts: You can acquire an understanding of IPv6 concepts by consulting with a variety of sources on the Web. One concept you should be familiar with is IPv6 address types.

Remember: For deployments on AIX, the GNU version of TAR must be installed before Netcool Configuration Manager is installed.

About this task

If networking is not configured properly (for example, if Netcool Configuration Manager is installed against the loopback interface or the server's primary hostname maps to an unroutable IP address) then various components, such as IDT, may not function correctly.

Procedure

Install the locale en_US.UTF-8 on each Netcool Configuration Manager server (that is, GUI and all Workers) before you install Netcool Configuration Manager.
Enable IPv6 on the AIX and Linux servers to facilitate IPv6 addressing for imports. See the operating system documentation for information on how to enable IPv6 support.
Add the IPv6 address by using either the ip or ifconfig command. The following example uses the ip command on Linux to add an IPv6 address (fe80::20c:29ff:fea8:b1b8) with a prefix length of 64, and a device name of eth0:
```
# ip -6 addr add fe80::20c:29ff:fea8:b1b8/64 dev eth0
```
The following example uses the ifconfig command on Linux to add an IPv6 address (fe80::20c:29ff:fea8:b1b8) with a prefix length of 64, and a device name of eth0:
```
# ifconfig eth0 inet6 add fe80::20c:29ff:fea8:b1b8/64
```
Note: See your IPv6 documentation for information on address types. Depending on where the servers are located and what they need access to will determine which addresses to use.
Each server in a distributed environment must be able to resolve the hostname of, and establish network communication to, every other server in the install environment. This can be achieved by ensuring that each server is configured to use a DNS server containing mappings for all servers, or by ensuring that the /etc/hosts file contains entries for all Netcool Configuration Manager servers. Thus, you can add to the /etc/hosts file:
- The IP address and associated hostname for the DNS server that contains mappings for all servers.
  OR
- The IP address and associated hostname for each server on which Netcool Configuration Manager is installed.
The following example specifies an entry for /etc/hosts that describes a DNS server with an IP address of 192.168.248.30, a hostname of myhost, and a domain name of .ibm.com that contains mappings for all servers in the install environment:
```
192.168.248.30 myhost.ibm.com
```
On Linux, ensure that the HOSTNAME in /etc/sysconfig/network is correct and fully qualified.
For example:
HOSTNAME=myhost.ibm.com
Note: The hostname specified in the /etc/sysconfig/network file should have a corresponding entry in the /etc/hosts file, as can be seen in the example in the previous step. The IP address of the hostname in /etc/sysconfig/network should be up and running on the primary interface of the server (typically, eth0).

Example

The following example uses the ifconfig command with the -a option to display information on all network interfaces, active or inactive, that reside on the specified server. The primary network interface in the following example is eth0 and it has the IP address mapped to the hostname in /etc/sysconfig/network.

ifconfig 	-a

cipsec0 	Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:FC:F8:01:8F
					NOARP MTU:1356 Metric:1
					RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
					TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
					collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
					RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

eth0 			Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:A8:B1:B8

inet 			addr:123.123.123.12 Bcast:123.123.123.123 Mask:255.255.255.0
					inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fea8:b1b8/64 Scope:Link
					UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
					RX packets:1326 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
					TX packets:2152 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
              collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
					RX bytes:179791 (175.5 KiB) TX bytes:2629566 (2.5 MiB) Interrupt:67 
              Base address:0x2000

lo 				Link encap:Local Loopback
					inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
					inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
					UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
					RX packets:232615 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
					TX packets:232615 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
              collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
					RX bytes:57057016 (54.4 MiB) TX bytes:57057016 (54.4 MiB)

sit0 			Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
					NOARP MTU:1480 Metric:1
					RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
					TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 
              txqueuelen:0
					RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

What to do next

Now, prepare the platforms for installation.