Registering and Unregistering Depots (swreg)

To make the software in a depot available for use across a network by other SD-UX commands, you must register the depot. You can also unregister a depot if you do not want it to be available.

Depots are registered or unregistered in these ways:

The swcopy command automatically registers newly created depots. (You can turn this function on or off with the register_new_depot option.)
The swremove command automatically unregisters a depot after removing all the software the depot contains.
The swreg command explicitly registers or unregisters depots.

The swreg command lets you explicitly register or unregister depots when the automatic registration features of swcopy or swremove are not enough. For example, you can use swreg to:

Make a CD-ROM or other media available as a registered depot.
Register a depot that was created with swpackage.
Unregister a depot to restrict network access without physically removing the depot from a host.

Register Media or Create Network Depot?

When does it make sense to use your software media as a registered depot versus using the media to create a network depot? In general, using media as a depot makes sense for small-scale use, such as when only one or two other systems need to access the media. If more systems will need to access the media, performance will be better if you create a network depot from the individual media. See “Additional Depot Management Tasks and Examples” for an example.

Registration and Security

Because SD-UX stores its objects in the file system, someone could build a “Trojan Horse” file system image of a software depot. This could breech the security of any system that installed products from the false depot. To protect systems from such a situation, SD-UX requires that depots be registered before software may be installed or copied from it. This check is always performed before granting access, except when swinstall is run by the local superuser.




	NOTE: Registration of a depot does not enforce any access restrictions. Access enforcement is left to SD security (see Chapter 9: “SD-UX Security ”). Registration with swreg requires insert permission in the host’s ACL.

Authorization

To register a new depot or to unregister an existing depot, swreg requires read permission on the depot in question and insert permission on the host. To unregister a registered depot, the swreg command requires write permission on the host. See Chapter 9: “SD-UX Security ” for more information on permissions.

Using swreg

swreg Syntax

swreg -l level  [-u]  [-v]  [-C session_file]  [-f object_file] 
[-S session_file] [-t target_file] [-x option=value]
[-X option_file] [objects_to_register] [@ target_selections]

Options and Operands

-l level: Specifies the level of the object to register or unregister, where level can be depot or root.
-u: Causes swreg to unregister the specified objects instead of registering them.
-v: Turns on verbose output to stdout and displays all activity to the screen.
-C session_file: Run the command and save the current option and operand values to a session_file for re-use in another session. See “Session Files”.
-f object_file: Reads a list of depots or root objects to register or unregister from a object_file instead of (or in addition to) the command line.
-S session_file: Run the command based on values saved from a previous session, as defined in session_file. See “Session Files”.
-t target_file: Read a list of target selections from a separate file instead of (or in addition to) the command line. See “Target Files”.
-x option=value: Sets a command option to value and overrides default values or a values in options files. See “Using Command Options”.
-X option_file: Read session options and behaviors from option_file. See “Using Command Options”.
objects_to_register: The software objects to be registered or unregistered.
@target_selections: The target on which the objects will be registered or unregistered. See “Target Selections”.

Changing Command Options

You can change the behavior of this command by specifying additional command-line options when you invoke the command (using the -xoption) or by reading predefined values from a file. The following table shows the defaults and options that apply to swreg:

Table 4-5 swreg Command Options and Default Values

admin_directory=/var/adm/sw
distribution_target_directory=/var/spool/sw
level=
log_msgid=0
logfile=/var/adm/sw/swreg.log
logdetail=false
loglevel=1
objects_to_register=

rpc_binding_info=ncacn_ip_tcp:[2121] ncadg_ip_udp:[2121]
rpc_timeout=5
run_as_superuser=true
select_local=true
select_local=true
target_directory=
targets=
verbose=1

For More Information

See Appendix A for complete descriptions of each default.

swreg Examples

To unregister a CD-ROM depot mounted at /mnt/cd, you would type:

swreg -l depot -u /mnt/cd

To register the same depot (mounted at /mnt/cd on the local host) as a depot to be available on the network, type:

swreg -l depot /mnt/cd

The following example enables direct access from one or two other systems to the HWEnable11i depot on the Support Plus CD, assuming the Support Plus CD is mounted at/cdrom:

swreg -l depot /cdrom/HWEnable11i