[pca] Questions on initial setup

[little help]

Martin,
   Thanks for the quick response.  Please see below for answers to your
questions.


On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 3:30 AM, Martin Paul <martin at par.univie.ac.at>wrote:

> Hi "little help",
>
>    1. From the pca website it states "*As pca uses the wget command to
>>
>>   download patches from the patch server, make sure that any specially
>>   required option is set in /etc/wgetrc or $HOME/.wgetrc*.".  I see the
>>   options to tell pca where wet resides but nothing to set the wgetrc
>> file.
>>   Is there a way to do this?  I would like to have one central file that I
>> can
>>   use for all my servers rather than copying a file locally.
>>
>
> It depends on wget itself where it looks for wgetrc files by default. The
> standard wget in Solaris looks for /etc/wgetrc and ~/.wgetrc. If you compile
> your on version and install it in e.g. a globally shared /usr/local, it
> looks for /usr/local/etc/wgetrc and ~/.wgetrc.
>
> You can also use the WGETRC environment variable to point wget at a certain
> wgetrc file. PCA itself does not include an option to specify a path to a
> wgetrc file, but there's an option "--wgetopt" to feed options directly to
> wget. I recommend setting up wget configuration (e.g. proxy) outside of PCA,
> as it can be used on its own, too.
>

Thanks for the pointer.  I think in my situation it make more sense to setup
the WGETRC variable.


>    2. I also notice that wget requires ssl support to work properly. I have
>>
>>   recompiled wget 1.12 a number of times with ssl support but each time it
>> has
>>   an issue (only on sparc - x86 works fine). I found a workaround by using
>> an
>>   older version of wget (1.10.2).  Is there an issue with pca using 1.12?
>>
>
> PCA should work fine with any version of wget. Always test it outside of
> PCA first - if that doesn't work, PCA won't either.
>
> Is there a reason why you aren't simply using /usr/sfw/bin/wget which comes
> with Solaris? It includes SSL support and works fine with PCA.
>

I did try a test outside of pca and it failed as well when going to https.
I guess I should have phrased the question better.  Are there any know
issues with wget 1.12 when compiling for SSL?  I asked because being that
wget is a core component of pca I thought if there was an issue someone here
would have run into it.

>
>    3. I have been testing with the --safe flag as well as --pretend to make
>>
>>   sure there are no issues with patches.  This is due to heavy
>> customization
>>   for files. Based on the results I save the files and run the install
>> without
>>   the flags and go back and replace any modified files.  I am wondering if
>> I
>>   opt to install without the --pretend and simply use --safe what would
>>   happen.  I know the patches that fail --safe will not get installed.  If
>> I
>>   go back and install these after would there be any issue with
>> dependencies,
>>   etc.  Any issues if it is kernel patch>
>>
>
> As you say, patches which fail the "--safe" check will not get installed.
> So if a later patch depends on such a patch, it won't get installed. It
> depends on the local situation (which or how many files included in patches
> have local modifications). Here, I always use "--safe", but I also try to
> keep the amount of modified system files to a minimum, and I rarely see such
> dependency issues. You'll have to try it out.
>
>    4. I have opted to use a local patch server.  When I run my script to
>>
>>   check the client and download the required patches everything works
>> fine.
>>   However, when I run a query from the client to download from the local
>> patch
>>   server it does not see to work.  Rather it complains about file type
>> unknown
>>   or file not found (404).  See below
>> ...
>>
>> --13:25:29--  http://foohost/dev/pca-proxy.cgi?109611-01
>>           => `/var/tmp//109611-01.tmp'
>> Resolving foohost... xxxx
>> Connecting to foohost|xxx|:80... connected.
>> HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
>> Length: 154,536 (151K) [text/plain]
>>
>
> Instead of the patch zip file, the web server returns the "pca-proxy.cgi"
> file itself. Obviously the web server doesn't execute the CGI file
> correctly. The .cgi file must have execute permissions, and the web server
> must be configured to allow CGI executions in the directory where
> "pca-proxy.cgi" is stored (for apache, this is "ExecCGI"). The PCA docs
> include an example to set up the apache server included in Solaris, too.
> Sometimes the error log of the httpd contains helpful information, too.
>

The .cgi file is simply a link to the pca file itself.  Could it be an
ownership issue?  In regards to the httpd.conf setting - see below.

  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
  AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

I set these based on the pca usage info. "Verify that the web server is
configured to run CGI scripts (for apache, check the ExecCGI and AddHandler
options in httpd.conf)."

You mentioned there was a sample httpd.conf file.  Can you let me know where
it is- I could not seem to find it.

>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Martin.
>
>
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