TABLE OF CONTENTS To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
In this chapter, we'll discuss problems that arise in some of the less common areas of system administration tasks that come up occasionally, but usually not on a daily basis. These tasks include the following:
Software license management
Printing
Scheduling jobs with the cron facility
Another way of looking at this chapter is that it includes the miscellaneous bits that don't fit anywhere else.
In most cases, the purchase of any software package (whether it's an operating system or a layered product) requires a license agreement with the software vendor. The license agreement defines the terms and conditions under which the software package may be used legally. System administrators have a twofold responsibility with respect to software licenses. First, they must ensure that all license terms and conditions are observed. Second, they must perform the license management operations needed to install and operate the licensed software.
In order to troubleshoot license problems, it's necessary to understand how Tru64 UNIX manages licenses. This function is performed by the aptlynamed License Management Facility (LMF). LMF creates and maintains a database of license information, which is stored in the file /var/adm/lmf/ldb. The Tru64 UNIX operating system and most layered products contain license-checking functions. These functions interact with the license database to verify that...
