Part 2. Preparing openSUSE for Micro...

Part 2.  Preparing openSUSE for MicroStrategy Installation

In this section I'm going to talk about all of the OS-specific settings and configuration that we're going to want to change for our MicroStrategy installation.  This will not cover anything metadata or web related, this is specifically so that the Intelligence Server plays nice with our OS when it comes time to start up.

Firewall

By default, openSUSE 11.2 installs with the firewall enabled, and most ports are blocked.  The Intelligence Server listens on port 34952 by default, so we're going to want this port opened up for any external clients.  To open up the firewall for this port (or whatever port you want to run the I-Server on), keep reading.

Open up the YaST Control Center by going to 'Computer -> YaST', and enter in your password.

After the Control Center pops up, find the 'Security and Users' section.

From here, click on 'Firewall' to open up the configuration.  Once the configuration opens, select 'Allowed Services' in the left-hand pane.

Click on 'Advanced', and you should be presented with a screen where you can enter in allowed ports, separated by spaces.  Here I simply enter the port that the Intelligence Server is going to be running on, and select 'OK'.

On the Firewall Configuration screen, hit 'Next' and 'Finish'.  Your new settings will be applied, and port 34952 is now open.

Shared Memory and Semaphores

Most of the openSUSE 11.2 default memory and semaphore settings match the recommendations from MicroStrategy.  One setting in particular however, doesn't;  the maximum number of system wide semaphore sets.  This setting can be checked by opening a terminal screen, and typing:

mstradm@linux-las9:~> /sbin/sysctl -n kernel.sem | cut -f 4

1024

MicroStrategy's recommendation for this setting is 2048 (KB TN#30320).  To increase this setting, we're going to need to edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file.  I'm going to open this file in vi with sudo

mstradm@linux-las9:~> sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf 

root's password:

and add the following to the end of the file

kernel.sem=250 256000 32 2048

The sysctl.conf file should look like this after:

Save the file.  Next we'll need to reload our new settings into the environment.  This can be done by typing:

mstradm@linux-las9:~> sudo /sbin/sysctl -p

Output:

net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1

net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 65536

net.ipv4.conf.default.promote_secondaries = 1

net.ipv4.conf.all.promote_secondaries = 1

kernel.sem = 250 256000 32 2048

Now if you type the same command above to check, the output will be 2048.

mstradm@linux-las9:~> /sbin/sysctl -n kernel.sem | cut -f 4

2048

OpenSSL Library Links

Next, we're going to need to create some symbolic links to existing OpenSSL libraries installed on the system.  When the MicroStrategy installation wizard and server starts, it's looking for the two specific lib files by a different name.  The default name has the version number at the end of the filename, however MicroStrategy is looking for '.so.4'

First, we're going to navigate to /usr/lib64

To list our source filenames, type:

mstradm@linux-las9:/usr/lib64> ls -ltra *libssl.* *libcrypto.*

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1605840 2009-10-23 21:19 libcrypto.so.0.9.8

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root  326256 2009-10-23 21:19 libssl.so.0.9.8

Now that we have our file names, create a symbolic link to each one.  *Note, this must be done with sudo.

mstradm@linux-las9:/usr/lib64> sudo ln -s ./libssl.so.0.9.8 ./libssl.so.4

mstradm@linux-las9:/usr/lib64> sudo ln -s ./libcrypto.so.0.9.8 ./libcrypto.so.4

Now when we type the same ls command above, we should see our new links.

mstradm@linux-las9:/usr/lib64> ls -ltra *libssl.* *libcrypto.*

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1605840 2009-10-23 21:19 libcrypto.so.0.9.8

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root  326256 2009-10-23 21:19 libssl.so.0.9.8

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      17 2009-12-27 23:11 libssl.so.4 -> ./libssl.so.0.9.8

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      20 2009-12-27 23:11 libcrypto.so.4 -> ./libcrypto.so.0.9.8

GUI Installer

By default, when you launch the MicroStrategy installer for the first time, you'll most likely receive an X error, and the installer will tell you to re-run with the -console or -silent switch.  To get around this, open up a console and type:

mstradm@linux-las9:/usr/lib64> xhost +localhost

localhost being added to access control list

Now when you run the setup installer, you should be presented with the GUI Install wizard.

And this concludes the openSUSE 11.2 preparation.  Depending on the environment size, or machine specs, obviously some of the above (Shared Memory, OpenSSL file names) settings do have the potential to change.  All of this is fairly straight forward though, even if you're not extremely familiar with the command line.  With that said, I'll probably create a prep script to perform the steps above just so that I don't have to manually do them each time.  I'll post the script when/if I create it.