PMDF Installation Guide
Tru64 UNIX Edition
PMDF-INST-DUX-60


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1.2 Preliminary tasks for new installations

There are several tasks that should be performed prior to installing PMDF for the first time. These tasks are outlined in the sections below.

1.2.1 Add users pmdf and pmdfuser to the /etc/passwd file

You must add two user accounts for PMDF to the system password file and specify (but not create) the accounts' home directories; use the vipw utility to edit the system password file, /etc/passwd, and add the accounts, (rather than using, e.g., adduser, which would create home directories). Specify pmdf as the first username with /pmdf/queue as its home directory, and specify pmdfuser as the second username, also with /pmdf/queue as its home directory. Be sure that the user ids and group ids for the pmdf and pmdfuser accounts are distinct from each other and from those of any other accounts on your system.

For instance, if your system has no accounts with user id or group id 30 or 31, then an example of appropriate entries to add to /etc/passwd is

pmdf:*:30:30:PMDF:/pmdf/queue:/bin/sh 
pmdfuser:*:31:31:PMDF user:/pmdf/queue:/bin/sh 

1.2.2 Install any required patches to the Tru64 UNIX operating system

Tru64 UNIX V4.0D is the minimum Tru64 UNIX version on which PMDF V6.0 is supported.

Contact Compaq for a list of any patches they may recommend for your version of Tru64 UNIX.

1.2.3 Check system kernel parameters

The default values of the Tru64 UNIX system kernel parameters such as max-proc-per-user and particularly max-threads-per-user may be rather low for a medium or large PMDF system. Note that PMDF jobs processing messages will normally all be running under pmdf account. Also note that PMDF includes many multithreaded components, such as the PMDF SMTP client, as well as the Dispatcher and servers running under it such as the SMTP, POP3, and IMAP servers. Thus you will want to allow enough processes per user, and enough threads per user, to handle your expected number of PMDF processes and threads.

To determine the maximum number of threads that will be needed by PMDF, you will need to add up the number potentially used by the Job Controller plus the number potentially used by the Dispatcher services:
Total_threads = J_threads + D_threads
For the Job Controller, compute the number of queues that run outbound TCP/IP channel jobs times the JOB_LIMIT for each such queue times the MAX_CLIENT_THREADS channel option, plus the JOB_LIMIT for each other queue (that is, those running single threaded jobs), plus the sum of all the Job Controller's JOB_LIMIT values (as one thread is used by the Job Controller per job as overhead), plus a few more threads for general Job Controller management overhead:
Jthreads = Sumnon-TCP/IP queues (JOB_LIMIT+1) + SumTCP/IP queues (JOB_LIMIT*MAX_CLIENT_THREADS + 1) + a few

For the Dispatcher services, compute
Dthreads = 3 + Sumservices (2+NUM_PORTS + MAX_PROCS*(3+MAX_CONNS)) where ports = number of ports that the service listens on.

The current values of your system kernel parameters may be viewed via the command:

# sysconfigdb -l
or
# sysconfig -q proc

If the current values are not high enough for the sort of PMDF load you expect, you should increase the values using the sysconfigdb utility and then reboot your system so that the increases take effect.


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