The IBM® Network StationTM Manager has been developed to provide a common support environment for the IBM Network Station across all IBM and Intel PC based server platforms. The IBM Network Station is an easy-to-use network computer, operating without any internal disk storage. Ideal for multi-platform computing environments, this allows access to a wide variety of applications running on many servers, including Intel PC servers running SCO UNIX.
Operating system SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.5 LAN card Ethernet or Token-Ring Network software TCP/IP and NFS configured and running Web server (NSM configuration server only) Netscape FastTrack 2.01a Web browser (NSM configuration server only) Netscape Communicator 4.0.4 or later Total RAM 32MB (64MB recommended) Disk space 200MB in /usr
NOTE: 65MB of the disk space is freed up again after the installation completes (unless the system is configured as a remote installation server).WARNING: The IBM NSM installation requires the UDK Compatibility Module for SCO OpenServer to be installed; IBM NSM installation will fail if this UDK package is not installed. On SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.5, the UDK Compatibility Module is part of the default installation. If the UDK package was not installed or was removed, install it from the SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.5 CD-ROM (or download it as described below).
On SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.4, IBM NSM can be installed if the UDK Compatibility Module for SCO OpenServer is installed first; however, Release 5.0.4 is an unsupported operating system environment because IBM NSM has not been tested in this environment and might not function correctly.
The UDK Compatibility Module can be downloaded as part of the Java Development Kit 1.1.3 package for SCO OpenServer from the free download products at:
http://www.sco.com/download
Only OSRcompat.pkg needs to be installed. After downloading and extracting the files, uncompress and install OSRcompat.pkg according to the instructions provided at the download site.
Depending on the speed and reliability of your Internet connection, you can either download the IBM NSM product as a complete tar file or as partial tar files.
- To download a complete tar file:
- Select the complete product (C0*.tar) file from the IBM NSM Download page.
- As root, move the file to a preferred installation directory:
mv C0*.tar /tmp1- Change to the installation directory:
cd /tmp1- Extract the installation media image (VOL file) from the tar file:
tar xvf C0*.tar- To download partial tar files:
- Download all of the partial product (P*.tar) files from the IBM NSM Download page.
- As root, move the files to a preferred installation directory:
mv P*.tar /tmp1- Change to the installation directory:
cd /tmp1- Extract the contents of the tar files. You must run the following command on each of the partial product files:
tar xvf <filename>.tarThe tar extraction should create these files:
ibmnsm1
ibmnsm2
ibmnsm3
ibmnsm4
ibmnsm5- Concatenate the 5 files to produce the installation media image:
cat ibmnsm1 ibmnsm2 ibmnsm3 ibmnsm4 ibmnsm5 > VOL.000.000
Once you have extracted the installation media image from the downloaded tar file(s), install the IBM NSM software and documentation using the SCOadmin Software Manager (custom):
- Double-click on the Software Manager icon in the System Administration window on the Desktop, or enter scoadmin software manager at a root prompt.
- Click on Software, then Install New.
- When prompted for a machine, select the system you will be installing from.
- When prompted for a media device, select Media Images.
- When prompted for the Media Images directory, enter the name of the directory containing the VOL* file (for example, /tmp1).
After Initial Installation
The IBM NSM software installation process runs scripts that perform the following tasks:
- Update NSM configuration files with DNS information derived from /etc/resolv.conf
- Export the /usr/netstation directory via NFS
- Create an instance of the Netscape FastTrack webserver as an NSM configuration server (if FastTrack is installed)
- Start the Network Station Login Daemon
This default configuration is sufficient to support a small number of Network Stations that are configured locally (use the procedure in "Configuring an IBM Network Station to Boot from the NVRAM Setting" in the online documentation to configure the Network Stations locally). Network Station users can now boot their Network Station from the server using the NFS protocol, log in to the server using their UNIX user ID and password, and load applications from the server, including the NC Navigator Browser. Using the browser, users can connect to the Network Station Manager configuration server to tailor their logon environment.
For networks containing a large number of Network Stations, more manageable boot methods can be employed, including BOOTP, DHCP, and TFTP. See "Configuring the Boot Server" in the installation topic in the online documentation for further information.
Product Documentation
After NSM is installed, you can view the online documentation with any browser capable of displaying frames.If you don't already have a suitable browser, install a free version of Netscape CommunicatorTM from the Optional Services CD (see Release and Installation Notes for SCO Internet products on the CD in /info/nscomm/relnotes/relnotes.htm).
On the NSM server, start the Netscape browser and open:
file:/usr/netstation/doc/index.html
Also, refer to the Online Help provided by the Network Station Manager program (URL http://<ServerName>:880/networkstation/admin) for further information.
Before You Continue
- To take advantage of new functionality, you must update the boot monitor on your Network Stations. Each Network Station must have a boot monitor of Version 3.0.0 or later. Even if you have purchased new Network Stations, you should verify the boot monitors of your Network Stations and update them if necessary. For information about updating boot monitors, see "Updating the Boot Monitor Code" in the topic on using NSM in the online documentation.
- Verify that the Network Parameters configured in the Setup Utility of each Network Station agree with your boot method. For example, if you want a Network Station to obtain its IP address through a DHCP server, ensure that the IP Address From field in the Setup Utility is set to Network. IBM Network Stations are set to Network by the factory. See "Working With the IBM Network Station Setup Utility" in the online documentation for more information.
- Verify that you started your DHCP or TFTP server and your HTTP server. Also verify that NFS daemons are running (biod, nfsd, rpc.mountd, rpc.statd, and rpc.lockd).
- If you are using DHCP and you have a router between your IBM Network Stations and your boot server, verify that the router is configured to handle DHCP requests.
- Use a web browser to access the IBM Network Station Manager at URL http://ServerName:880/networkstation/admin to administer local client applications, including the NC Navigator web browser and terminal emulators. You need root user authority to perform this task on the server. See "Using the IBM Network Station Manager Program" in the online documentation for information on using the Network Station Manager.
- For more information about setting up Network Stations, see "Logging On and Working With IBM Network Station Manager Applications" in the online documentation.
Licensing
The IBM Network Station Manager 3.0.1 is free and does not require any license data to be applied.
Known Limitations
This release has the following known limitations:
- WARNING: This is pre-release software and is provided without warranty. SCO does not provide support for pre-release software except through information provided on the website at http://www.sco.com.
- The Network Station Java Virtual Machine delivered with this product is not Y2K compliant.
- When using the Netscape Navigator 3.04 browser or the IBM Network Station Navigator browser, there is a problem with the initial display of the IBM Network Station Manager program. After successful logon, the menu buttons and navigation buttons are missing from the right-hand and lower frames.
To produce the correct display on the IBM Network Station Navigator browser, simply type Alt-1 (press the One key while holding down the Alt key). This forces the browser to refresh the contents of the frames and display missing information. It may be necessary to type Alt-1 more than once to establish the correct display.
To produce the correct display on the Netscape Navigator 3.04 browser, you need to reduce the number of simultaneous network connections to "1". To do this, load the browser and select from the menu:
Options->Network Preferences->ConnectionsChange the value in the "Connections" field from 4 to 1.
This problem does not occur with other browsers such as Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0.
- This version of the product does not include full National Language Support. Messages displayed by the IBM Network Station Manager program and the Network Station Logon daemon are in English only.
- The URL to use when linking to the IBM Network Station Manager server on the SCO OpenServer system is:
http://yourserver:880Note that, on SCO OpenServer, the IBM NSM server is running on port 880, not port 80 as on most IBM platforms.
- The IBM Network Station Manager program error messages state that the error will be logged to a system log (syslog) or application log. This logging does not take place.
- Do not log on to a Network Station as the root user. For security reasons, the root user does not have permission to write to the server disk. This causes the Navigator browser to report errors when attempting to save configuration information and bookmarks to the server.
- The version of the IBM Network Station Navigator browser that provides 128-bit encryption (mentioned in the NSM documentation) is not currently available from SCO.
- At the time of writing, the Lotus eSuite product (mentioned in the NSM documentation) was not available for SCO platforms.
- The SCO OpenServer Release 5 implementation of the DHCP server does not currently provide support for the DHCP options 66 (bootstrap server) and 67 (bootfile path) mentioned in the documentation. This is not a problem because this same information is available in the DHCP server response when the boot_server, boot_file_dir, and boot_file options are specified.
This can be a problem, however, if many DHCP options have been selected and the "DHCP option overload" feature has been enabled. It is recommended, therefore, that the "DHCP option overload" feature remains disabled.
- SCO UNIX platforms do not provide Twinaxial support.
- SCO UNIX platforms do not provide support for the Wnn6 (OMRON) input method for Japanese languages.
Last updated: 25Mar99
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