Exploring HP’s System Inventory Utility

CSY’s free tool expands the 3000 system manager’s toolbox

Review by John Burke

This is something of a first for the 3000 NewsWire, a TestDrive of a free “product” from HP. The System Inventory Utility (SIU) was first announced with some fanfare at the HP 3000 division’s January 22 “HP e3000 Transition — First Steps” Webcast. For a replay of that CSY Webcast, see www.hp.com/go/3000 or go directly to

www.hpclients.com/desktv/2698_01-22-02/e3000_transitions_e.htm

[Editor’s Note: Be sure you’re using a Windows PC before you head to that second Web address. In an era when open computing is realized everywhere on the Web, HP is still presenting its Webcast replays with outdated software that refuses to play the Webcasts on anything but the Windows operating system. It’s as if the 15 million Macs on the planet, and the millions more Linux desktops, don’t exist!]

At the time of that Webcast this new SIU 3000 software was presented as the first of many things to come from HP to help HP 3000 customers plan a migration away from the 3000. Created by Jeff Vance of CSY (the CI Architect), the SIU aims to give the System Manager everything from a summary to a detailed view of exactly what is on a given system. As such, it is intended to help the team planning a migration to identify files and systems that might have to be dealt with.

For the homesteader, this software has a purpose as well. It is intended to help organize the 3000 system and target areas that might need your attention.

Features

The SIU was designed to aid System Managers in determining and understanding what files exist and what the accounting structure is on a given system. The SIU scans all files, groups, directories and accounts, accumulating disk usage statistics, file code data and database information. For IMAGE databases, jumbo datasets are counted, partial key index files are noted and DBE files are reported. Allbase databases are also counted.

Finally, the SIU can determine, based upon a pre-defined matrix of accounts to vendors, what third -arty software might be installed (for example, if you have the REGO account you probably have, or had, Adager installed).

The script requires MPE/iX 6.0 PP1 or later because of CI functions used. As noted below, it will chew up a lot of CPU cycles, so you will probably want to run it at minimum during off-peak usage times.

Installation

The SIU tool consists of one CI script of more than 2,100 lines that does most of the work, one program binary that processes database information (and its source), and an ASCII file containing a simple matrix matching accounts and vendors. It can be obtained in three different formats from the Software Downloads’ section of Jazz:

jazz.external.hp.com/src/scripts/siu.

The Web site presents the SIU in three formats: a Tarball, Store-to-disk format, and Store-to-disk via Reflection labels. Unfortunately, Jazz does not support direct FTP downloads, so you may be limited to downloading it to your PC and then using one of several documented methods to transfer the distribution to your HP 3000.

However, if you have at least one HP 3000 with an Internet connection you can use wget, first ported by Lars Appel and available on Jazz to directly download your chosen SIU distribution. Figure 1 shows a shell session where I downloaded the tarball with wget and unpacked it with tar (the errors in unpacking the tarball didn’t have any impact on the download process). Figure 2 shows the results of unpacking the tarball.

SIU is the fixed ASCII MPE script file. Out of the box, SIU must reside in a group with PM since the accompanying program file, SIUDBP, requires PM.

SIUDBP is an MPE NM program file which by default is assumed to be in the same group as SIU. The program needs PM capability to access database root files.

SIUVEND is a fixed, ASCII file that maps MPE account names to know vendors. By default it is assumed to be in the same group as SIU. SIUDBS is a fixed, ASCII Pascal source file for SIUDBP.

Documentation

The script is essentially self-documenting. Typing SIU ? tells you how to use it and explains the parameters. Additional information is available on the Jazz Web page.

The TestDrive

SIU has two parameters:

• The name of the account(s) or directories to scan (wildcards permitted, multiple names must be quoted to appear as a single argument).

• The reporting detail level either as an integer bit mask or string of level mnemonics, quoted and separated by spaces (SUMMARY, ACCT, DB, VENDOR, FILECODE, GROUP, FILE, IO)

Figure 3 is a summary report for my 927LX R&D machine. This illustrates the one caution I have about the SIU, the CPU cycles it consumes. At three hours, 57 minutes elapsed time and 13,714 CPU seconds, the SIU is something of a system hog you need to run at off-peak hours – and by itself on smaller systems.

Figure 4 shows the same summary report for a 959/400 production system. Even on this system, the SIU rolled up one hour, 13 minutes elapsed time and 4,105 CPU seconds; i.e., one processor full time. Note the last line, “Dir most files: /usr/netware/sys/public/ (1081)”. It appears that we have remnants of Netware/iX on this system from sometime before I arrived five years ago! Guess I learned something useful just by running the summary report.

Figure 5 is the first page from an “everything” run on the 927. Figure 6 shows a portion of the Directory Info section. Figure 7 shows a portion of the Database Info section. Figure 8 shows a portion of the Files by Filecode Info section. Figure 9 shows more Files by Filecode. Figure 10 shows the Third-Party Info section. These should give you a feel for the type of information the SIU can provide.

Conclusions

The SIU was not a quite as new to me on its release, since I was on the alpha test team. What was somewhat surprising was the way the tool was presented at the January 22 Webcast. I got the feeling it was thrown in at the last minute in an attempt to demonstrate that CSY was doing something concrete to help customers facing the daunting prospects of a migration. As such, it may have raised expectations to an unrealistic level.

I don’t mean to minimize the usefulness of the SIU, or in any way denigrate the fine work done by Jeff Vance in developing the SIU. At the very least, the script provides an interesting example of the kinds of things you can do with CI programming. And in many cases, the SIU will provide useful information to both the migrater and homesteader, as the figures in this TestDrive show.

However, the SIU is hardly a necessary or sufficient first step in either migration or homesteading. Perhaps realizing this, I notice that CSY does not even mention the SIU on the home page of Jazz. You have to go to the downloads section and find it alphabetically.

Should you download the SIU and run it on all your systems? Absolutely. Regardless of whether you are planning a migration or expect to homestead, the SIU will provide you with useful information about your HP 3000 system, something you can never have too much of.

John Burke is editor of the NewsWire’s net.digest and Hidden Value columns and has managed HP 3000 systems for more than 20 years.