Setting up for Installation on a Linux Server - Documentation for Bmc Network Automation 8.9

You must perform the following tasks before starting the installation on a Linux server:

(Optional) Creating a user account on a Linux server

The BMC Network Automation installation on a Linux server requires a non-root user account (for example, bcan). This account is referred to as the BCAN_USER account. You can create this account either before installation or during installation.

To create a user account on Linux and assign the required permissions

1. Log on as root.
2. Create the BCAN_USER account.
3. Assign a password to the BCAN_USER account. Make a note of the group to which the user account belongs. You would be asked for this group name by the installer.
   BMC recommends not using the at sign (@) in the password because some device file transfers might fail because they use the user:password@host/file format. So if the password contains an at sign, the file transfer thinks all characters after the at sign is the host.
4. Create a home directory that is owned and writable by that user.
5. Ensure the shell associated with the BCAN_USER account is the Bourne shell (/bin/sh). Also ensure the entry in /etc/passwd is similar to the following example:
   bcan:x:800:800:BCA-Networks User:/export/home/bcan:/bin/sh
6. Execute the umask 022 command.
   This ensures that files and directories created by the installer are usable by the BCAN_USER account.
7. Endure that the BCAN_USER account has access to the FTP and SCP directories.

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Checking required disk space on a Linux server

Perform the following steps to check the required disk space on a Linux server:

1. Confirm that the drive where you plan to install the BMC Network Automation application server has at least 1.2 GB of free disk storage. Do not install the software on a network or NFS mounted drive. You must install the software on a local drive.
2. Confirm that the /tmp directory has at least 450 MB of free space.
3. If the /tmp directory does not have sufficient free space, you can run the following commands before installing to make the installation use an alternate temporary directory. The directory specified in this command must have at least 200 MB of free space available.
   $ IATEMPDIR=/your/free/space/tmp_directory
$ export IATEMPDIR
4. Verify that the server host computer has sufficient disk space, as discussed in System requirements.
   The installation uses /var/bca-networks-data as the default for the location of the dynamic data for the application.
   As an alternative, you can install the BCA-Networks-Data directory into a separate partition that meets the disk space requirements.

5. Configure the following permissions:

   Directory	Permissions	Octal Value
   Installation directory	rwx rwx rwx	777
   Temp or alternate directory	rwx rwx rwx	777
   Parent directories of the temp or alternate directory	rwx rwx r-x	775

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