TOC PREV NEXT INDEX

CHAPTER 7 Remote Administration

7.1 Introduction

The Remote Administration Module is a character-based interface that allows you to administer Backup Professional from a remote site. Since it uses a character based interface, it can be accessed via modem, from a terminal, via telnet, or using a terminal emulator from any PC. You can dial in from home using the standard vt100 terminal emulator under Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and administer Backup Professional. The BP agent for windows comes with a nice terminal emulator that has been tested with the remote character interface. When installing the BP agent for windows, you can optionally install this capability. Otherwise, dialing in from home on a PC, it is suggested you obtain putty.exe which is free for personal home use.

This section of the manual is not designed to give you a comprehensive screen-by-screen description of the product. Rather, it introduces you to the concepts of how it differs from the XWindow based interface and gives you specific tips on how to navigate and use the character based interface. The release notes, documentation and full context-sensitive help is available from within the Remote Administration Module.

The character based Remote Administration Module is launched by running the following command:

bpmenu -c

The Remote Administration Module parallels the GUI Administration interface as much as possible. This means the layout of the menus and actions are the same as they are in Xpromon. You can perform most of the functions available in Xpromon. Instead of using a mouse, you use your arrow keys, tab keys and function keys to navigate. The name of the binary is called promon and can be found in the $BPDIR/bin directory. Queued tasks can be monitored by selecting the [Tasks->Status Monitor] menu (Figure 33).

FIGURE 33. Task List

The interface is "lean and mean" but highly functional. It is very fast. On terminals or consoles that support color, a pleasant color scheme is used. The interface resets your previous color scheme when you exit. Whereas xpromon may show a button that performs a given action, under promon, you have a function key that does the same thing. Promon uses function keys F1 through F8. On every screen, the function keys that are active have a label at the bottom of the screen that indicates the action.

For example F7-Quit is at the bottom of many screens. This takes you back to the previous menu or screen. By repeatedly pressing F7 you can back right out of the program and exit. F1-Help is item-specific help. Help is often specific to the item that is highlighted. If a menu is active each choice will display its own help paragraph.

There are other common function key selections you may see:

F2-Zoom - this expands the selected item in its own scrolling window and gives you a very detailed view of it.

F3-PageDown - works the same as the standard page up and page down keys.

F4-PageUp - these are provided in cases your terminfo database does not describe the sequences for Page Up and Page Down and you really need to have these functions available.

F3-Filter -This allows you to apply a "filter" to a list of items. This filter is for the current session in that screen only. It allows you to view only the items you are interested in. For example, if you are viewing a list of all the backups run on the system you may be interested in only those for a given client or a given month. Setting a filter allows only these items to be selected when viewing. If you quit the screen and re-enter it, the filter must be reset.

F4-Refresh - This rereads the database and redisplays the items on the screen with any updated or current information. With backups coming and going, multiple tape drives performing multiple backups and other users updating information, the information you are seeing on your screen may not be current. F4-Refresh makes the information you are seeing the most current and up to date.

F5-Search This invokes a Search widget that allows you to enter patterns to search for. You see the progress of the search, the number of items searched and the number found. You can press <DEL> at anytime to stop the search and can later resume it. This is a very handy feature when looking through a catalog of over 90,000 files.

F6-Select - This selects the desired item and performs the intuitive action on the item. If you are looking at a list of backups and press F6-Select, it selects the backup and shows you the files within it.

7.2 Capabilities of the Remote Administration Module

· Setting up Devices (Add/Modify/Delete)
· Setting up Client Workstations (Add/Modify/Delete)
· Setting up Backup Schedules (Building simple or complex schedules)
· Checking on the status of Backup Schedules
· Re-running failed backups after a fix has been made
· Setting or changing the Supervisor Override Password
· Checking on the Integrity of the Database
· Rebuilding an individual Database Table if one of them becomes corrupted
· Initiate Purge of Database (empty backups, recycled tapes, etc.)
· Viewing the current running Tasks
· Viewing all queued Tasks
· Checking on the status of all devices, clients, schedules, and tasks
· Disabling a device, client workstation or schedule
· Resetting the time a schedule should be run
· Temporarily putting a schedule on hold so it can run at a later time
· Running reports
· Viewing Files for any backup
· Tape commands (Label Tape/Rewind/Seek/View Tape Label/View Backup Label)
· Tape Knowledgebase
· Scratch a Tape (e.g. reuse the tape with new label)
· Monitoring all Backup Professional Processes (View/Terminate)
· Start or Stop Tasker (Background Task Scheduler)
· Create Airbag diskettes on systems where Airbag is supported
· Generate Technical Support Request Fax Sheet
· Generate Weekly Summary Report
· Generate/View Failure Report
· View Contents of any Tape
· Administer Tape Juke Boxes
· Restore - restore a file, set of files, or directory to another system
· Create/Modify/Run a backup profile
· Tape Device Functions (Reset/Test Capabilities)
· Physical Tape Functions (Labeling/Cloning/Importing/Browse Backups/Zap)
· Check status of any running job including important warnings or messages
· View/Modify any configuration setting for Backup Professional (over 200 settings)
· Print any screen (reports, tape knowledgbase, backup history, diagnostic messages)
· Bare Metal for Intel clients (CD/Floppy version)
· Bare Metal for Intel clients (Bootable CD version)

7.3 Navigating Fields and Forms

FIGURE 34. Device Modification Form

In many cases, a convenient form is used to modify items. This is used to change values in the device library (Figure 34). All the items are displayed inside a form. When you are done editing the form, you press F6-Accept to accept the form. All the changes you have made are then made permanent.

If you make a mistake while editing a field within a form you are usually notified immediately. Also, a helpful hint appears in a Status Line area at the bottom of the screen. If you follow the instructions in the Status Line you will experience few problems. If however, you simply do not understand what is desired after about three failed attempts, the default value is placed back in the field and you are notified to that effect.

There are different types of field items. One is a dropdown box. This gives you all the available choices in a convenient list box. You use the arrow keys to highlight the item you want and then <RETURN> to select it. The dropdown box then disappears and the item you selected appears in the field. You can recognize a dropdown box by the symbols [v] to the right of the field. If you press <RETURN> when you see the [v], the dropdown box appears. Otherwise you can use your arrow keys or the tab or shift tab to go the to next or previous field.

Also, note the combo box. This is like a dropdown box, except you are allowed to type in an entry if you like. For example, when you enter in the default block size for a device, you use a combo box. This presents the most common block sizes available, but allows you to enter your own if you have special needs. You know a field is a combo box because immediately upon entering the field, the contents are surrounded with square brackets and asterisks appear instead of spaces. If you press <RETURN> when the cursor is at the start of the field, you see the available choices. If you start entering data, it is screened and accepted. When you navigate out of a Combo Box, the brackets disappear and the data looks like any other field.

Please keep one thing in mind; you should always use the arrow keys or tab keys to navigate through the fields of a form. Do not use the <RETURN> because it will expand every dropdown box and combo box and make it quite inconvenient while navigating.

On some forms, you see F2-Choices. If there are available choices for the field, they are shown. In most cases, however, a Combo Box is used, so F2-Choices is somewhat redundant. If you see a prompt in the Status Line saying to press F2 for choices, then F2-Choices is active and will be of assistance to you.

7.4 Messages and Hints

There are only two places where messages and hints are shown. The first is the Status Line which is at the bottom of the screen, just above a line indicating which function keys are active. This is used for informative but not critical messages. Hints and additional information is displayed here. For example, when you navigate a menu, further information about the menu choice is given in the Status Line. This helps you decide if that choice does what you expect. Also, the Status Line is used to indicate what is happening in the program. This is in case there is a pause, you will at least know what is happening.

For more critical messages, a dialog box is used in the center of the screen. You cannot miss this and must acknowledge the message by pressing any key. The dialog messages come in three flavors: Errors, Warnings, and Messages.

Another place where helpful information is displayed is the top and bottom frames of a window. The top frame typically contains the title. Many times useful information is displayed here. For example, when viewing files for a backup, the backup number, total number of files, and total megabytes is displayed in the top frame of that window. Also, when needed for additional information the bottom frame of a window may be used.

Armed with the above information, you should now be ready to use the Remote Administration Module. Keep in mind, the quality of the display will depend on how detailed your terminfo file is for the terminal you are using. The terminfo file should have entries for each of the function keys. If it doesn't you are notified of this immediately and you must get this fixed. You can see the settings of your terminfo file by running the command infocmp on Unix systems. You can save this output to a file, edit it, and recompile it by using the tic command. Please refer to the man pages and your system administrator for details.

7.5 Context Sensitive Help.

The Remote Administration Module has one of the most comprehensive help systems available for a character based interface. The online help is truly context-sensitive.

Due to the limited space available on a character display screen, not everything can be shown that is useful to the user to make a decision about which options to select. Therefore, the interface was designed with the understanding that anytime there is the slightest misunderstanding or when further clarification is needed that the F1-Help function is available.

In every menu, on every screen, in every section, you can press F1-Help and receive meaningful help information. Every item in a toggle box contains detailed help. If you are looking at a dropdown window of menu choices and are unsure what each actually does, press F1 for a detailed explanation. If the abbreviated choices for the function key actions are unclear, press F1 for a detailed explanation of what each function key does on each screen.

You can also edit the context-sensitive help. If you find a way to clarify the wording or wish to add additional information, you can easily do so by pressing F6-Edit. This takes you into either the vi editor or the editor of your choice and you can actually change/modify/delete the context-sensitive help for an item.

A topical help index is also available. You can preview any of the help topics available by scrolling through the list of topical help items. This is convenient to quickly learn the type and richness of the help available.

The latest release notes for the Remote Administration Module are viewable when using the product (available under the Help Section). Also, the full text version of the manual is viewable from within the product (also available under the Help Section). If you have an HTML browser, the HTML version of the Remote Administration Manual is available by pointing your browser to the file /usr/bp/info.dir/ManPromon.html. It is also available for viewing from within the X Window GUI interface.

7.6 Vertical and Horizontal Scrolling

The character-based interface displays items in rows when there is not enough room to display the entire line, you can use horizontal scrolling. You know this is possible in two ways. First, there is a message on the Status Line indicating horizontal scrolling is in effect. Second, you see horizontal scroll markers on the bottom right border of the window that looks like >>>. You use your right arrow key to scroll horizontally and scrolling occurs in 20 character units. Thus, by pressing the right arrow key three times, you scroll 60 characters to the right.

In many selection boxes where there are more items than will fit in the window, you will need to scroll vertically to see the other items. You know this is the case as you see a small v in the bottom right corner of the window. Also, you see a scroll bar superimposed on the right hand border of the window indicating your relative position in the entire list of items.

7.7 Searching for Files

The Remote Administration Module comes with a nice search engine that lets you search for any file you want by name or wildcard. This feature is available anytime you are browsing files in a backup. You need this since many backups contain 70000 to 100000 files. The search engine is integrated with the Backup Professional's List Manager that lets you keep track of the resulting lists for each search. You can perform complex searches and sub-searches on the searches. A complete history is available which allows you to switch between different search lists.

The search module is available by using F5-Search or the slash `/' key (as in many other utilities including vi). You then fill out a small form asking you such questions as whether or not the search should be case sensitive. There are two basic types of wild-card pattern searches you can perform.The first is the wild-cards such as the shell uses (SHELL). This is the default. The `?' represents any single character and `*' represents any string of characters. Characters in brackets [a-d] represent a range of characters.

The second type of search is using global regular expression (GREP) style wild-cards. This is the style that the Unix grep utility as well as ed, and sed use. This style uses the period character (.) to represent any single character and the asterisk character (*) represents 0 or more instances of a character. Characters in brackets [a-d] have the same meaning as in the SHELL style wild-card. You can read the man pages for grep or sed for more details on the use of wild-cards. The GREP style is more powerful, but requires a greater understanding and sophistication. The SHELL style is simpler to understand and remember.

You can specify whether or not you want to stop after the first match. If not, you can always interrupt a search at anytime by pressing any key. The search shows you the progress visually and any matches as they occur. Once searching is complete, you preview the list and can select files by pressing F5-Select or <SPACEBAR>. Or you may decide to perform a sub-search or return to the original list and try again. You can toggle to any list by using F4-Prev.

When you select a file, it is marked with a bright yellow asterisk (*). Once you have finished searching, you can preview all selected files to be sure they are the ones you want. Then, these files are used for the restore list of the Backup Professional.

7.8 Adding a Scheduled Unattended Backup

When adding a schedule, it is best to add a basic schedule item first (tape device, time it launches, schedule item name), then save it. Once this is done, you add client workstations to the schedule.

7.9 Viewing the Results of a Restore

If you run a restore, your best bet on finding out what happened is to view the last restore log as follows: Misc->View Logs->Last Restore Log. This shows you what happened on the last restore. Likewise, for a backup Misc->View Logs->Last Backup Log

You can view a backup or restore while it is progress by using the progress viewer as follows: Routines->Local Backup Progress Viewer.

7.10 Graphics Modes

The Remote Administration Module tries to adapt to your terminal type using information from your terminfo database. The quality of the display depends on how well your terminfo database entry is written. There are 10 built in graphics modes and usually one will look pleasing to the eye. These are accessed using the -g option as in -g2 or -g6. Using -g0 causes a very basic display with no color and no background and basic line drawing characters. So if your display is not immediately pleasing, try the -g option with number 0-9 until you get a result that is pleasing. For example, the following command invokes the Remote Administration Module using graphics mode 2.
bpmenu -r -g2

If the -g0 option does not produce a correct appearance on the screen, you have something wrong with the TERM environment variable. The positioning codes (control codes that position the cursor on the screen) do not match your terminal type. You should recheck the setting of the TERM variable and try again.

By default, the background color of magenta is used. If you do not care for this, you can use the -b option to change this to blue.

7.10.1 Color Settings

There are two different color mappings available on most Unix systems. One is ISO (International Standards Organization) and the other is IBM. The mapping used depends on such factors as the console driver, the display mode, and the curses package native to the hardware.

In order to allow you to control this, you can set an environment variable called COLOR_MAP. It can be set in one of two ways, either to ISO or IBM. Normally the label displaying the function key should be cyan background with black colors. If they appear yellow or brown, your system has flipped the color mapping. Just flip it back by setting the COLOR_MAP to one of ISO or IBM.

7.10.2 Terminals with no or limited function keys

Some terminals such as the vt100 only support 4 function keys in native mode. Others, do not have the function keys properly represented in the /usr/lib/terminfo database. Either way the Remote Administration Module attempts to compensate for this as much as possible. When you press F5, you can use `5' instead.

There are some exceptions to this rule. If you are in a screen where you input data such as free form text, obviously `5' above cannot serve as both a function key and a letter you can input as part of free form text. In these cases, you have to exit all the fields that allow text, and press

<CNTRL> f to accept the form (instead of F6) and move on.

Here are the equivalent mappings for terminals with limited or no function key support:

TABLE 8. Table of FUNCTION KEY Mappings
Function Key Equivalent Mapping
F1 1
F2 2
F3 3
F4 4
F5 5
F6 6 or ^f
F7 7
F8 8
F8-Print p
F6-Form ^f
F1-Help ?
F1-Help ^Z
PAGE-DOWN ^N
PAGE-UP ^P


7.10.3 Function Keys Not Set

If you receive an error message on start-up saying that your function keys are not set, then at least the F1 key is not set. You really should set the key descriptions in the terminfo. You can de-compile the current entry using infocmp -I $TERM. Then add entries in the form kf1=xxx, kf2=xxx,up to kf12=xxx

For ansi, the entries look as follows:

kf1=\E[M,kf2=\E[N,...,kf12\E[X.

Then recompile the entry using tic (terminfo compiler).

The \E represents the ESC character.

If you cannot do this, then you can try using `1' in place of F1, `2' in place of F2 and so on. This works in most places. It will not work in areas where you can input alpha-numeric data such as fields and forms. In most all cases, a work-around has been provided. For example, you can use ^f (Control-f) instead of F6 to accept a form.

7.10.4 TERMINFO Adjustments

Both the HP-UX version and the AIX version of the Remote Administration Module, use a SVR4 compatible terminfo database. Because of this, the native terminfo database provided with the operating system will not work properly. The following terminal types are supported as built-ins:
AIX: vt100 vt220 ansi scoansi ansi.sys xterm aixterm dtterm wy50 wy150 ibm3151 ibm3161
HPUX: vt100 vt220 ansi scoansi ansi.sys xterm aixterm dtterm wy50 wy150 hp2392

If you do not see the terminal type you want, you must do the following:

1. cd /usr/bp/bpinit # Where initialization info is kept
2. uncompress terminfo.src.Z # Master source file for NCURSES
3. /usr/bp/bin/tic -v1 -s terminfo.src # Compile all entries
4. compress terminfo.src # Put it back how it was

This builds the entire terminfo database in /usr/local/share/terminfo which takes up about 13 MB of disk space. You can then peruse through the files and remove the entries you don't want or ever anticipate using.

Keep in mind that some entries do depend on others. Usually the dependencies are within the same class of terminals.

The above procedure is the preferred one, however, there is an alternative if you are in a hurry and are absolutely sure you have a good and tested native terminfo entry. An example will elucidate this alternative procedure. Let us say you have a Adds Viewpoint terminal.This is known as TERM=adds and is stored in /usr/lib/terminfo/a/adds.

You run the following command:

infocmp -I adds >/tmp/adds.src # Use native OS version of infocmp
/usr/bp/bin/tic -s /tmp/adds.src # Use BP version of terminfo compiler

This takes the older style terminfo description and converts it to the newer format. In this case, the issue is mainly one of binary compatibility. The old format is converted to ascii and then re-compiled using the tic shipped with Backup Professional. Be sure you are not using tic from your native system, it will produce a format unreadable by Backup Professional.

Also, be sure the terminfo description is correct and has been well tested by other applications on your system. We suggest you use the description we ship in terminfo.src, most of which have been thoroughly tested.

The terminfo database for Backup Professional Promon is kept in /usr/local/share/terminfo. This is the same as the database kept by NCURSES.

If you make a symbolic link from this directory to the regular terminfo database directory /usr/lib/terminfo (or /usr/share/lib/terminfo), you can get pretty strange results. The reason is that each $TERM entry is only partially understood. This causes very strange things to happen on the screen so this is not recommended.


TOC PREV NEXT INDEX