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Systems Management: Distributed Software Administration
Copyright © 1997 The Open Group
Introduction
Scope
This Software Administration specification defines a software packaging layout, and utilities
that operate on that packaging layout as well as software
installed from that packaging layout.
The scope of this Software Administration specification is administration of software across
distributed systems.
This administration includes, but is not limited to,
packaging of software for distribution,
distribution of
software to systems, installation and configuration of software on systems,
removal of software from systems, and delivery of
updates
and
patches
packaged in 1387.2 format.
This Software Administration specification is motivated by many factors, including a desire by system
administrators and software suppliers to have a common way of installing and
removing software.
To meet the needs of these groups, this Software Administration specification consists of several
components, listed below.
The readers of this Software Administration specification include system administrators, suppliers
of software that implement this Software Administration specification, and suppliers of software that use
implementations of this Software Administration specification.
Readers in each of these categories may find their attention drawn
to different sections.
The key components are listed below.
- Software structures
This Software Administration specification defines a hierarchical set of structures
used to define
software.
Information is kept about the software based on these structure
definitions.
The structure definitions apply both to installed software and to
software prepared for installation but not yet installed.
- Software packaging layout
This Software Administration specification defines the organization of software on a distribution
medium,
the information held about that software,
and the way in which such information is represented.
This enables both portability of software distributions across systems of
different architecture,
and the use of different media to distribute software
(including both file system and serial image forms).
- Information kept about software
This Software Administration specification defines the information that is held about software, both
installed software and distributions.
This definition provides a consistent view of software, even when that
software is provided from various sources.
The way in which the information is held is
undefined within
this Software Administration specification.
- Utilities to administer software
This Software Administration specification defines a utility to convert software into the
packaging layout, known as a distribution.
This Software Administration specification also contains utilities to examine the information in a
distribution, copy software from one distribution to another, install
software from a distribution, remove software from a distribution, and
verify the integrity of a distribution.
There are also utilities for configuring installed software,
patching software,
verifying the integrity of installed software,
examining and modifying the information held about installed software,
and for removing installed software from a system.
This provides administrators a consistent method of dealing with
software across all conforming systems.
- Distributed software administration
This Software Administration specification defines the concepts,
and the utility syntax and behaviors,
for managing software in a distributed environment.
This includes the concept of different software administration roles
(developer, packager, manager, source, target and client).
Different utilities involve different roles,
and different roles may be distributed across multiple systems within
a single command execution.
Although not requiring a fully conformant POSIX.1 base (ISO/IEC 9945-1 - see referenced documents) and
POSIX.2 (ISO/IEC 9945-2 - see referenced documents),
this Software Administration specification is based upon the knowledge of, and documentation for,
existing programs that assume an interface and architecture similar to
that described by POSIX.1 and POSIX.2.
Any questions regarding the definition of terms or the semantics of an
underlying concept should be referred to POSIX.1 and POSIX.2.
This Software Administration specification does not require the use of any specific programming
language and, in particular, does not require the use of the C
language.
It is based upon the knowledge of, and documentation for,
existing programs that utilize C-language interfaces.
Any questions regarding the definition of terms or the semantics of an
underlying concept in this language should be referred to the
C Standard
(ISO/IEC 9989 - see referenced documents).
Dependencies
Features Inherited From POSIX.1
This section describes some of the features provided by
POSIX.1
(ISO/IEC 9945-1 - see referenced documents) which
are assumed to be globally available to all
conforming implementations.
This section does not attempt to detail all the POSIX.1 features
that are required by all the utilities defined in this Software Administration specification.
The utility descriptions point out additional functionality required
to provide the corresponding features needed.
The following description explains frequently used concepts.
Utility description statements override these defaults when
appropriate.
File System
The hierarchical directory structure of POSIX.1 is assumed to be
available,
as well as support for case-sensitive file names.
In addition, various file attributes are also assumed to be present,
including the following:
type,
owner,
group,
mode,
uid,
gid,
mtime,
major,
minor.
Environment Variables
The existence of environment variables in general is assumed, as well
as
PATH,
LANG,
LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES,
LC_TIME,
TZ.
Data Interchange Format
The ability to read and write the data interchange formats of POSIX.1 is
assumed, including both extended
tar
and extended
cpio.
See
POSIX.1.
See also this Specification
Serial Format and Multiple Media
.
Features Inherited From POSIX.2
This section describes some of the features provided by
(POSIX.2)
which are assumed to be globally available to all systems conforming to
this specification.
It does not attempt to detail all of the POSIX.2
features that are required by all the utilities and control scripts
defined in this Software Administration specification. Additional functionality required may be found
in the utility descriptions and in
Control Script Execution and Environment
.
All of the utilities defined in POSIX.2
are required, including the shell interpreter (sh).
This assures a portable environment for executable control files.
Conformance
Full Conformance
A conforming implementation
must support all interfaces defined within
this Software Administration specification.
These interfaces must support all the functional
behavior described herein.
The interfaces covered by this definition of conformance include, but
are not limited to, utilities and their options and extended options,
the behavior of the utilities, including the generation of events,
structures, attributes and their values, and file formats.
The system may provide additional or enhanced utilities, functions, or
facilities not required by this Software Administration specification.
Optional extensions should be identified explicitly.
Optional extensions should conform to
ISO/IEC 9945-2 - see referenced documents, section 2.10.2 (utility syntax guidelines").
Optional extensions, when used, may change the behavior
of utilities, functions, or facilities defined by this Software Administration specification.
In such cases, the
conformance statement for the implementation
must define an execution environment
(that is, general operating instructions)
in which a conformant implementation may be operated upon
and yield the behavior specified by this Software Administration specification.
In no case must such an environment require modification of a
conformant implementation.
Limited Conformance
A limited conformance implementation
must meet all of the criteria established for a
fully conformant implementation,
with the following exception:
-
For the value of
HOST
in specifications of sources and targets
(see
Source and Target Specification and Logic
,
the system may support only the local machine.
While this type of limited conformance removes support for remote
operations, the syntax of all utilities and files must remain
identical to that required for
fully conformant implementations.
The way in which this limitation is imposed by the implementation
must be implementation defined.
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