IBM RS/6000 SP, Problem Determination Manual

Page: 64 / 316

This soft copy for use by IBM employees only.
# odmget -q name=sp CuAt
CuAt:
name =
″
sp
″
attribute =
″
node_number
″
value =
″0″
type =
″
R
″
generic =
″
DU
″
rep =
″
s
″
nls_index = 24
# rm /tmp/cuat.sp
2.8 NIM Problems
Network Installation Management (NIM) enables you to centrally manage the
installation of AIX Version 4.1 Base Operating System (BOS) and optional
software on machines with a networking environment.
As part of PSSP 2.1, NIM was introduced as the network installation support for
the RS/6000 SP. NIM is a general AIX product, and its introduction to the SP
environment was intended to centralize and be coherent with the rest of the
RS/6000 products. Most of the NIM commands and options are being hidden by
PSSP scripts and commands, so everyone dealing with SP nodes installation and
customization must deal with NIM.
In this section we cover some of the problems you can face when dealing with
NIM during the installation and customization process.
The Network Install Management (NIM) environment is defined on two
characteristic machine roles:
master and client.
NIM Master This role is dedicated to only one machine in the NIM environment.
The NIM master is the single point of administration for NIM
installations. All NIM-related operations are performed on that
machine. Within the RS/6000 SP environment, the machine in the
master role is always the CWS.
NIM Client Systems which become installed from the NIM master have the role
of NIM client. They remain NIM clients unless this role is explicitly
removed. Within the RS/6000 SP environment, nodes were installed
as
standalone machines and do not stay NIM clients.
NIM provides two installation types, depending on whether the NIM master or
NIM client is initiating the installation process: pull installation and push
installation. Within the RS/6000 SP environment, only pull installation is
supported.
The NIM concept is modeled by NIM objects. There are several classes of NIM
objects on which different sets of operations can be performed. The following
operations are defined for all kinds of NIM objects:
•
define (creates new NIM objects)
• change (adds new or changes existing attributes of NIM objects)
•
remove (removes existing NIM objects)
The different NIM object classes are defined as follows:
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SP PD Guide