How to run ClearTrigger in a multi-flavor UNIX OS environment?
The binary for all flavors of windows is the same (as is common), but the binary for different flavors of UNIX (i.e. HP vs. Sun/Solaris) are not (also common). When you have a heterogeneous UNIX environment you often have to use mount points or links to establish a common path to the different flavors of the executable. The solution is very similar (in fact exactly like you might have already solved it in UNIX for ClearCase).
For example, one might have HP , Solaris , Linux and AIX UNIX clients in their environment so the challenge is to have one path to cleartrigger for all clients. The solution can be attained through symbolic links, mount points or multiple copies to a already linked or mounted directory. All three methods are covered below:
For one example (symbolic links), we will assume that we want /usr/atria/abs_bin/cleartrigger to be the path by which ClearTrigger is applied to VOBs. One could place the binaries for the different operating systems on the Earth Machine at:
Earth: /export/policy/abs/bins
Which is exported and highly available to all unix clients as /net/earth/abs_bins . On Earth, this directory structure exist under /export/policy/abs/bins:
/AIX
/HP
/Linux
/Sun_Solaris
and the above directories contain the cleartrigger binary for each OS. Now on your UNIX AIX clients you can make the symbolic link in /usr/atria (which exist on ClearCase UNIX clients- but you could create and use another directory like /usr/abs/bin):
cd /usr/atria
ln -s /net/earth/abs_bin/AIX abs_bin
On HP clients do this:
cd /usr/atria
ln -s /net/earth/abs_bin/HP abs_bin
On Linux clients do this:
cd /usr/atria
ln -s /net/earth/abs_bin/Linux abs_bin
On Sun/Solaris clients do this:
cd /usr/atria
ln -s /net/earth/abs_bin/Sun_Solaris abs_bin
Now on each client /usr/atria/abs_bin/cleartrigger refers to the correct binary for the OS. When done this way there is only one location to place the binaries Earth:/export/policy/abs/bins so you can upgrade ClearTrigger on all client by just updating the binaries there; this is easy on the administrator for future ClearTrigger upgrades.
The same can be accomplished with mount points ; we will assume that we want /abs_bin/cleartrigger to be the path by which ClearTrigger is applied to VOBs. One could place the binaries for the different operating systems on the Earth machine at:
Earth: /export/policy/abs/bins
Which is exported and highly available to all unix clients. On Earth, this directory structure exist under /export/policy/abs/bins :
/AIX
/HP
/Linux
/Sun_Solaris
and the above directories contain the cleartrigger binary for each OS.
Now on your UNIX AIX clients you can create the mount point /abs_bins to Earth:/export/policy/abs/bins/AIX .
While on your UNIX HP clients you can create the mount point /abs_bins to Earth:/export/policy/abs/bins/HP .
While on your UNIX Linux clients you can create the mount point /abs_bins to Earth:/export/policy/abs/bins/Linux .
Finally, on your UNIX SUN/Solaris clients you can create the mount point /abs_bins to Earth:/export/policy/abs/bins/Sun_Solaris .
Now on each client /abs_bin/cleartrigger refers to the correct binary for the OS. Again, when done this way there is only one location to place the binaries Earth:/export/policy/abs/bins so you can upgrade ClearTrigger on all client by just updating the binaries there; this is easy on the administrator for future ClearTrigger upgrades.
Finally, one can just have multiple copies on the client UNIX machines, for this example we will assume that we want /usr/atria/bin/cleartrigger to be the path by which ClearTrigger is applied to VOBs (/usr/atria/bin is used because it likely already exists and is in user paths already if ClearCase is installed, however, any path can be used like /usr/abs/bin).
Now just place the appropriate cleartrigger binary in the directory on each client machine. If ClearCase itself was a link or mounted install to one then machine then /usr/atria/bin itself is linked or mounted to a single machine and placing the binaries in the linked from or mounted from location will suffice.
Now on each client /usr/atria/bin/cleartrigger refers to the correct binary for the each UNIX client. When done this way there is only one location to place the binaries if the ClearCase clients are a linked or mounted install (i.e. /usr/atria/bin is linked or mounted) if the clients are a local install then one has to update each machine when upgrading ClearTrigger.
The ClearTrigger Region is the combination of the ClearTrigger Region Name and a path to the policy depot. You may consider the region as the Region_Name:policy depot pair. Any number of ClearTrigger Regions can be defined to subdivide the VOBs in your organization.
There are other ways to accomplish the task but these are the three (3) most popular. I hope this helped.
