framemaker installation

[Michael Gold]

In article <1991Mar6.215418.6815 at eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> xxwrp at picasso.lerc.nasa.gov (Bill Palenske) writes:

	   Preface: I don't know much about how FrameMaker functions.
	   Pardon any malapropisms.

S'Okay.  I'll try not to botch the reply...

	   It's been suggested to me that I install FrameMaker (SGI) on a
	   non-SGI platform that serves as a disk farm ( Call this machine
	   DF ).  I gather that the impetus behind this suggestion was that
	   DF would then function as our license server.  The following
	   quote from the release notes seems to be pretty clear that
	   this cannot be done.

You are correct; the license server process *must* run on an IRIS.

	   I guess then that a followup suggestion may be:  why not put
	   the FrameMaker software on DF and nfs mount it on some SGI which
	   would function as our license server.  I suppose this could be
	   made to work.  I'm not enthusiastic about this proposal.  It seems
	   like a lot of bother.  Moreover, it would probably considerably
	   complicate matters vis-a-vis host ids and getting passwords.  

This would work.  The only potential problem is when you actually
license the software as superuser; by default root does not have
superuser priveledge on an NFS filesystem.  But this can certainly be
worked around in a number of ways.

	   The problem is we have a disk space crunch on most of our SGIs 
	   ( we're looking at getting some more disks, but that is quite a 
	   ways down the line. )  I do have one SGI that has enough space 
	   and which I would like to make the license server, but it is 
	   frequently used for special processing and I am reluctant to take 
	   too many cycles away from that.  My question here is: how does the
	   license server work?  Is it a deamon which will be
	   quiescent/sleeping most of the time or what?

The license server process is indeed a daemon; it does not use many
cycles.  When a FrameMaker process is active, it pings the license
server daemon every so often (I believe the interval is 30 seconds).
The most intense work is done when checking out or checking in a
license, and I'd be suprised if you noticed the activity.

	   Finally, from reading the release notes it is not clear to me how
	   _client_ machines are set up to use FrameMaker.  Does one nfs mount 
	   things from the license server, install actual binaries on clients,
	   what?   

Yes, the easiest thing is to mount the frame directory (i.e.
/usr/frame) from the server onto the client, and then run
$FMHOME/bin/fminstall on the client machine to set up a few things,
like /etc/magic and WorkSpace.  Be sure to mount with the -nointr
option, or SIGALRM's will interrupt NFS reads, I think.  (This may no
longer be necessary; perhaps some NFS guru can shed some light.)

--
    Michael I. Gold	 	You go your way, I'll go mine,
    Silicon Graphics Inc.	I don't care if we get there on time,
    Internet: gold at sgi.com	Everybody's searching for something they say,
    Voice: (415) 335-1709	I'll get my kicks on the way...