Creating a SETUPIP GroupWise Client Distribution System


The GroupWise client can be distributed through a system called SETUPIP. SETUPIP requires a client and a server/host. The SETUPIP Client is called SETUPIP.EXE. The SETUPIP Host is a web server that serves up a compressed GroupWise install set called a SETUPIP Client Distribution Set.

The advantage to distributing the GroupWise client via the SETUPIP method is that users do not need to have file-system rights to a server to install the GroupWise client.

This section explains all the aspects of creating a SETUPIP GroupWise Client Distribution System. SETUPIP Host configuration instructions given in this chapter are specific to Apache on NetWare 6.5 and Apache on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. However, you can model the instructions given in this chapter to try to implement a SETUPIP Host on other flavors of web servers.

Note

You must have a web server of some sort. The web server must allow connections on port 80, the standard HTTP port.


Creating the SETUPIP.EXE Client Utility

The SETUPIP.EXE Client utility is a file that you actually generate. Here are the steps you must complete to create the SETUPIP.EXE Client utility:

1.

In your GroupWise 7 Software Distribution Directory, run WRITEIP.EXE from the ADMIN\UTILITY\SETUPIP directory.

2.

In the first IP address field, indicate the IP address or DNS address of a web server at your site that can serve up the GroupWise client files. The server must be able to support port 80 connections. Also, specify a path in the address field that will actually represent the directory location off of the web server that will end up containing GroupWise client files. You will actually create this directory in the next section. In our sample system we indicated the following two locations:

http://wwwfs1.wwwidgets.com/gw7cl http://wwwfs2.wwwidgets.com/gw7cl

SETUPIP can support the notion of failover SETUPIP Host web servers. So you can fill in the additional IP addresses as desired. Additionally, if you choose the option Choose IP addresses at random, SETUPIP will be enhanced to randomly try downloading from any one of the SETUPIP Host web servers.

3.

Configure the download options as you desire. See Figure 12.5, which shows an example of the WRITEIP utility configured to generate a new SETUPIP.EXE.

Figure 12.5. The WRITEIP utility configured to create a new SETUPIP.EXE Client


4.

When everything is configured correctly, click OK and the new SETUPIP Client file SETUPIP.EXE will be created in the ADMIN\UTILITY\SETUPIP directory. Later in this chapter you will be told what to do with the newly created SETUPIP.EXE file, but let's set that topic aside for a moment.

Although the SETUPIP utility is created, and can be executed, it will error out if you run it, because you must implement the rest of the SETUPIP GroupWise Client Distribution System.

Configuring the SETUPIP Host Web Server

The SETUPIP Client expects a SETUPIP Client Distribution Set, which is a handful of files and a directory path that should be present and served up at the HTTP location you specified in the WRITEIP utility. The directory path should be under the web server's "document root" folder. The name of the directory path you create should correlate to the name of the directory path you indicated earlier in the WRITEIP utility. So in our example, the directory path should be a directory called gw7cl, under the web server's document root directory. So, for example, on a typical NetWare 6.5 server, you would create the gw7cl directory off of SYS:APACHE2\HTDOCS. After the directory path is created, there are specific files you will want to put in place.

Right now, though, is a good time to make this discussion more specific to the version of web server you are using. We'll first review the steps to creating the SETUPIP Host on the NetWare 6.5 platform. And then we'll explain the exact same steps relative to Apache on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 server. The methods we employ for these web servers should be sufficient for you to implement a SETUPIP Host on whatever web server platform you happen to have.

Configuring the SETUPIP Host Web Server on NetWare 6.5

The SETUPIP Host web server generally does not need any specific "configuration"; it's all about creating the directories and placing the files that will make a correctly configured SETUPIP Client Distribution Set. Your Apache web server, though, should allow for connections on the standard HTTP port, which is port 80.

In our sample scenario, we will use each of the steps indicated on the servers that host the DNS names: wwwfs1.wwwidgets.com and wwwfs2.wwwidgets.com. The reason for this is that when we ran the WRITEIP utility earlier, we indicated that both of these servers were going to be available to serve SETUPIP Client requests:

  1. Create a directory off of the document root folder that correlates to the directory you specified in the WRITEIP utility. In our example, the directory will be named GW7CL. On a NetWare 6.5 server, typically the document root folder is on the server's SYS volume at the path ..\APACHE2\HTDOCS. So the full path to the new SETUPIP Client Distribution Set in our example will be as follows:

    \\WWWFS1\SYS\APACHE2\HTDOCS\GW7CL

  2. Off of the ..\APACHE2\HTDOCS\GW7CL directory, create a directory called WIN32. So the path will be this:

    \\WWWFS1\SYS\APACHE2\HTDOCS\GW7CL\WIN32

  3. Locate the following two files and place them in the ..APACHE2\HTDOCS\GW7CL directory: SETUPIP.FIL and SETUPIP.LANGUAGE. In our example, it will be a file by the name of SETUPIP.US. However, for German the name of the file would be SETUPIP.DE, or for French it would be SETUPIP.FR, and so forth.

    If you would like your SETUPIP Client Distribution Set to have multiple languages, you can put in multiple SETUPIP.LANGUAGE files. The location of these SETUPIP.LANGUAGE files may depend on how you obtained your GroupWise media, or the language you are using. With the software we were using when writing this chapter, these files were located in the GroupWise 7 SDD in ADMIN\UTILITY\SETUPIP. However, you may need to find these files in some other location based on the GroupWise 7 media you have obtained.

  4. Copy a properly configured GroupWise client SETUP.CFG and a SETUP.INI file from your GroupWise 7 SDD to the APACHE2\HTDOCS\GW7CL\WIN32 directory on the SETUPIP Host web server.

    For instructions on configuring these files, see the sections earlier in this chapter titled "GroupWise Client Installation Requirements Scenario" and "SETUP.CFG and SETUP.INI Changes." By default, the SETUP.CFG file is in the GroupWise 7 SDD\CLIENT directory, and the SETUP.INI file is in the GroupWise 7 SDD\CLIENT\WIN32 directory.

    If you would like your SETUPIP Host server to allow for multiple GroupWise Client language installation types, be sure to configure the SETUP.CFG and SETUP.INI files correctly. Specifically, you will want SETUP.CFG to indicate more than one Language type. SETUP.INI should allow for a Language Selection dialog. See the sections earlier in this chapter titled "Network Installation Requirements Scenario" and "SETUP.CFG and SETUP.INI Changes" for more guidance on this subject. Also, as mentioned just a couple of paragraphs ago, you will need the correct SETUPIP.LANGUAGE file(s) to represent the languages you want users to have the choice to install.

Now that you have both the SETUPIP Client and the SETUPIP Host configured, you have a complete SETUPIP GroupWise Client Distribution System. The ..\GW7CL directory should look similar to what's shown in Figure 12.6.

Figure 12.6. The contents of the GW7CL directory


The ..\GW7CL\WIN32 directory should look similar to what's shown in Figure 12.7.

Figure 12.7. The contents of the GW7CL\WIN32 directory


Now you need to test your SETUPIP System, and perfect it if needed. To test it, simply run the SETUPIP Client utility you created earlier. It's called SETUPIP.EXE, and by default it's located in the GroupWise 7 SDD\ADMIN\UTILITY\SETUPIP directory. When you run SETUPIP.EXE, you should see a dialog similar to the one shown in Figure 12.8. After SETUPIP.EXE downloads and extracts the GroupWise Client, the regular GroupWise Client SETUP.EXE runs.

Figure 12.8. The SETUPIP Client utility SETUPIP.EXE downloading the GroupWise client


If you run into problems getting SETUPIP to work, make sure that the Apache web server is running. You may also want to confirm that the Apache web server is listening on port 80. The command to load Apache on a NetWare 6.5 server is as follows:

apache2

To further troubleshoot and configure your Apache web server on NetWare 6.5, you may need to stray into the configuration file for Apache. Typically the configuration file is SYS:APACHE2\CONF\HTTPD.CONF. Also, note that case sensitivity is important to Apache, so be sure to keep the filename lowercasefor example, httpd.conf. The common writing convention in this book shows filenames in uppercase, so we refer to files in uppercase format. Generally on NetWare the case of a file does not matter, but to Apache it does.

Configuring the SETUPIP Host Web Server on SLES9 Server

The SETUPIP Host web server generally does not need any specific "configuration"; it's all about creating the directories and placing the files that will make a correctly configured SETUPIP Client Distribution Set. Your Apache web server, though, should allow for connections on the standard HTTP port, which is port 80.

In our sample scenario, we will use each of the steps indicated on the servers that host the DNS names: wwwfs1.wwwidgets.com and wwwfs2.wwwidgets.com. The reason for this is that when we ran the WRITEIP utility earlier, we indicated that both of these servers were going to be available to serve SETUPIP Client requests:

  1. Create a directory off of the document root folder that correlates to the directory you specified in the WRITEIP utility. In our example, the directory will be named GW7CL. On a SLES9 server you actually may have multiple instances of Apache installed. In our environment, the HTDOCS directory was at the following path: /var/opt/novell/httpd/htdocs. So the full path to the new SETUPIP Client Distribution Set in our example will be as follows:

    /var/opt/novell/httpd/htdocs/gw7cl

  2. Off of the ../httpd/htdocs/gw7cl directory, create a directory called win32. So the path will be this:

    /var/opt/novell/httpd/htdocs/gw7cl/win32

  3. Locate the following two files and place them in the ../httpd/htdocs\gw7cl directory: SETUPIP.FIL and SETUPIP.LANGUAGE. In our example, it will be a file by the name of SETUPIP.US. However, for German the name of the file would be SETUPIP.DE, or for French it would be SETUPIP.FR, and so forth.

    If you would like your SETUPIP Client Distribution Set to have multiple languages, you can put in multiple SETUPIP.LANGUAGE files. The location of these SETUPIP.LANGUAGE files may depend on how you obtained your GroupWise media, or the language you are using. With the software we were using when writing this chapter, these files were located in the GroupWise 7 SDD in ADMIN\UTILITY\SETUPIP. However, you may need to locate these files in some other location based on the GroupWise 7 media you have obtained.

  4. At the time we wrote this book, we noted that the SETUPIP.FIL and SETUPIP.US files needed to be named in a very specific manner to work correctly. You may know that on Linux files, case is very important. And in fact the SETUPIP Client utility is actually asking for the SETUPIP.FIL and the SETUPIP.US files with a certain file case. Here is the case we had to make sure that the files were in, in order to get SETUPIP to work:

    SetupIP.fil

    and

    SetupIP.US

    So if, when I copied over the SETUPIP.FIL file, it was actually named setupip.fil on the Linux server, I would need to rename the file. From a terminal session on the Linux server, I would type the following command:

    mv setupip.fil SetupIP.fil

    If the SETUPIP.US file is actually named setupip.us, I would need to rename the file. From a terminal session on the Linux server, I would type the following command:

    mv setupip.us SetupIP.US

  5. Copy a properly configured GroupWise client SETUP.CFG file and a SETUP.INI file from your GroupWise 7 SDD to the /var/opt/novell/httpd/htdocs/gw7cl/win32. Make the case of both of these files lowercase.

    For instructions on configuring these files, see the sections earlier in this chapter titled "GroupWise Client Installation Requirements Scenario" and "SETUP.CFG and SETUP.INI Changes." By default, the SETUP.CFG file is in the GroupWise 7 SDD\CLIENT directory, and the SETUP.INI file is in the GroupWise 7 SDD\CLIENT\WIN32 directory.

    If you would like your SETUPIP Host server to allow for multiple GroupWise Client language installation types, be sure to configure the SETUP.CFG and SETUP.INI files correctly. Specifically, you will want the SETUP.CFG file to indicate more than one Language type. The SETUP.INI file should allow for a Language Selection dialog. See the sections earlier in this chapter titled "Network Installation Requirements Scenario" and "SETUP.CFG and SETUP.INI Changes" for more guidance on this subject. Also, as mentioned just a couple of paragraphs ago, you will need the correct SETUPIP.LANGUAGE file(s) to represent the languages you want users to have the choice to install.

Now that you have both the SETUPIP Client and the SETUPIP Host configured, you have a complete SETUPIP GroupWise Client Distribution System. The ../gw7cl directory and contents under the directory should look similar to what's shown in Figure 12.9.

Figure 12.9. The contents of the gw7cl directory and subdirectories on a SLES9 Server


Now you need to test your SETUPIP System, and perfect it if needed. To test it, simply run the SETUPIP Client utility you created earlier. It's called SETUPIP.EXE, and by default it's located in the GroupWise 7 SDD\ADMIN\UTILITY\SETUPIP directory. When you run the SETUPIP.EXE, you should see a dialog similar to the one shown in Figure 12.10. After SETUPIP.EXE downloads and extracts the GroupWise Client, the regular GroupWise Client SETUP.EXE runs.

Figure 12.10. The SETUPIP Client utility SETUPIP.EXE downloading the GroupWise client


If you run into problems getting SETUPIP to work, make sure that the Apache web server is running. You may also want to confirm that the Apache web server is listening on port 80. The command to load Apache on our SLES9 server is as follows:

/etc/opt/novell/httpd/init.d/httpd start

The command to start Apache on your Linux server could very well be different. To further troubleshoot and configure your Apache web server on Linux, you may need to stray into the configuration file for Apache. The *.conf file on our SLES9 server is /etc/opt/novell/httpd/conf.d. Also, note that case sensitivity is important to Apache, so be sure to keep the filename lowercase.

The Apache error log file is also a good place to go for troubleshooting purposes. On our SLES9 server the error log was located at /var/opt/novell/httpd/logs/error_log.

When writing this chapter, we used the Apache error_log to determine that the SETUPIP Client was trying to find the SETUPIP.* files with a particular case. So using the error_log file for troubleshooting is really handy.

Troubleshooting SETUPIP

The SETUIP Client utility creates an error log called SETUPIP.ERR if SETUPIP.EXE encounters an error condition. This file is created in the Windows root program folder, such as C:\WINNT. Here is an example of the contents of our SETUPIP.ERR file in our test system:

137.65.55.215 - The file SetupIP.US was not found. (200)

Another good place to go for troubleshooting purposes is the error log of the web server. For example, the Apache error log file is also a good place to go for troubleshooting purposes for the Apache web server.



NOVELL GroupWise 7 Administrator Solutions Guide
Novell GroupWise 7 Administrator Solutions Guide
ISBN: 0672327880
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 320
Authors: Tay Kratzer

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