NAME

swask - Ask for user responses"

SYNOPSIS

No additional rationale is required under this heading.

DESCRIPTION

The purpose of this utility is to provide support for interactive requirements for software. By being able to execute these interactive scripts independently of swinstall and swconfig, it allows those utilities to still be scheduled for non-interactive execution.

The request scripts can be used to ask the administrator questions, or requests, where responses are needed by the software before installation or configuration.

The utility may be used to perform the following task:

• Answer the requests of software that has interactive customization needs.

The swask utility and request scripts are for software specific questions only. It does not provide any mechanism for implementation specific questions, although an implementation can choose to support implementation, site, or system-specific enhancements as normal implementation extensions.

OPTIONS

No additional rationale is required under this heading.

OPERANDS

No additional rationale is required under this heading.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

No additional rationale is required under this heading.

EXTERNAL EFFECTS

No additional rationale is required under this heading.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

This Software Administration specification has not included a naming convention or structure for storing per client response information. If a request script requires per client information, then it needs to store that information for all clients in the response file, and then locate the appropriate information during configuration.

This Software Administration specification provides a means for the request script to determine which clients are being requested, and for the configure script to determine that client. See Control Script Execution and Environment .

For example, a request script that requests per client keys is as follows:

 

set - $targets
echo 'keys="' > response
for i in $targets
do
    echo enter key for $i
    read j
    echo $i $j >> response
done
echo '"' >> response

and the corresponding configure script that looks up the correct key from the response file:

 

set - $keys
while [ -n $1 ]
do
    if [ "$1" = "$targets" ]
    then
        echo key is $2
        break
    fi
    shift; shift;
done

An implementation needs to ensure that any response files that already exist in the source or the catalog are copied to the SW_CONTROL_DIRECTORY before the request script is executed. The order of checks for response files allows for the following precedence:

• User input (if ask=true)

• Pre-existing response file

• Pre-existing client configuration

• Model response file (from source)

There are numerous ways to implement where the request scripts are executed and what SW_CONTROL_DIRECTORY is set to, for the command:

 

swask -s source -c catalog Foo.Bar

EXAMPLES

Example implementation A:

 

mkdir catalog/Foo/Bar
copy request script for Foo.Bar to catalog/Foo/Bar
copy any necessary response file to catalog/Foo/Bar
    if catalog/Foo/Bar/response exists, no action
    else if source/catalog/Foo/Bar/response exists, copy it
set SW_CONTROL_DIRECTORY=catalog/Foo/Bar
execute catalog/Foo/Bar/request
(remove catalog/Foo/Bar/request)

Example implementation B:

 

mkdir catalog/Foo/Bar /usr/tmp/aaaa43542/Foo/Bar
copy request script for Foo.Bar to /usr/tmp/aaaa43542/Foo/Bar
copy any necessary response file to catalog/Foo/Bar
    if catalog/Foo/Bar/response exists, no action
    else if source/catalog/Foo/Bar/response exists, copy it
set SW_CONTROL_DIRECTORY=catalog/Foo/Bar
execute /usr/tmp/aaaa43542/Foo/Bar/request
(remove /usr/tmp/aaaa43542/Foo/Bar)

Example implementation C:

 

mkdir /usr/tmp/aaaa43542
copy any necessary response file to /usr/tmp/aaaa43542
    catalog/Foo/Bar/response exists, copy it
    else if source/catalog/Foo/Bar/response exists, copy it
set SW_CONTROL_DIRECTORY=/usr/tmp/aaaa43542
execute source/catalog/Foo/Bar/request
mkdir catalog/Foo/Bar
cp /usr/tmp/aaaa43542/response catalog/Foo/Bar
(remove /usr/tmp/aaaa43542)

EXIT STATUS

No additional rationale is required under this heading.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

No additional rationale is required under this heading.