Getting Started


IBM Network Station Manager 3.0.1 for UnixWare 7 systems

About IBM Network Station Manager (NSM)

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.

System Requirements

IBM Network Station Manager

Operating system UnixWare 7 Release 7.0.0, 7.0.1, or 7.1.0
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 120MB (4500 inodes) in /usr

IBM NSM Documentation

Disk space 1.5MB in /usr/lib/scohelp

Installation

Perform the following steps as root:

  1. Download the product tar files from the Download page.
  2. Move the files to a preferred installation directory:

    mv filename*.tar /tmp1

  3. Change to the installation directory:

    cd /tmp1

  4. Using the tar(1) command, extract the installation images:

    tar xvf filename.tar

  5. If you downloaded partial product tar files, combine the package pieces into one file:

    cat ibmnsm1 ibmnsm2 ibmnsm3 ibmnsm4 ibmnsm5 > ibmnsm.pkg

    If you downloaded the complete product, skip this step.

  6. Use pkgadd or the AppInstaller to install the IBM Network Station Manager documentation and software packages.

pkgadd -d `pwd`/ibmnsm.pkg

  1. Click on the App_Installer icon in the Admin_Tools window.
  2. In the Install From menu, choose Other.
  3. In the Folder box, type the full pathname of the .pkg file, including the filename (for example,  /tmp1/ibmnsm.pkg).
  4. Press <Enter> or click on the Update View button.
  5. Click on the icon that appears, and then click on the Install button.

Select the component packages that you wish to install. The default is that all packages are selected for installation. Press TAB to move the cursor between fields and use the Right/Left arrow keys to select Yes or No. When finished, move the cursor to Apply and press ENTER to continue.

You will be asked to select Automatic or Custom for each of the packages that can prompt the user for configuration information during installation. Use the TAB and Right/Left arrow keys to make your selection. The default is Automatic, which implies that appropriate default values will be set for all configurable parameters.

After Initial Installation

The IBM NSM software installation process runs scripts that perform the following tasks:

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 NSM topic under SCOhelp 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 NSM installation topic under SCOhelp for further information.

Product Documentation

After NSM is installed, you can view online documentation by opening a frames-based HTML browser and accessing:

http://<ServerName>:457

where server is the name of the SCO UNIX server on which NSM is installed.

Select System Management then IBM Network Station Manger (NSM).

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

Known Limitations

This release has the following known limitations:

  1. 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->Connections
    

    Change 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.

  2. 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.
  3. The URL to use when linking to the IBM Network Station Manager server on the SCO UnixWare 7 system is:
       http://yourserver:880
    

    Note that, on SCO UnixWare 7, the IBM NSM server is running on port 880, not port 80 as on most IBM platforms.

  4. 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.
  5. If this product is installed on UnixWare 7 Release 7.0.1, the Netscape Administration Server will crash (core dump) when accessed from a browser. This problem is resolved by installing PTF7054b. The problem does not occur on UnixWare 7 Releases 7.0.1 and 7.1.0.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. At the time of writing, the Lotus eSuite product (mentioned in the NSM documentation) was not available for SCO platforms.
  9. The SCO UnixWare 7 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.

  10. SCO UNIX platforms do not provide Twinaxial support.
  11. SCO UNIX platforms do not provide support for the Wnn6 (OMRON) input method for Japanese languages.

Licensing

The IBM Network Station Manager 3.0.1 is free and does not require any license data to be applied.

 

Document version 3.0.1a
3 February 1999
© 1999 The Santa Cruz Operation Inc. All rights reserved.