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Commands for community creation and package delivery

The rest of this document is dedicated to completing the Everserve installation with commands for community creation. Note that the installation of Everserve onto all systems that will participate in the community is required. First is an overview of the steps that you will take.

Step one - mySQL and Everserve installation on the Community Manager. This is already done!

Step two - create the community definition and copy the seed file to each participating system. Specific commands to accomplish this are spelled here.

Step three - get Everserve installed onto all other systems, copy the seed file, and join these systems to the community. Each system that was added to the community in Step two was assigned a role. Take care with Everserve installation on the other community peers because the install program is specific to each role. When Everserve installation is executed at each station, the role designated during install should match the role that is assigned by the Community Manager. This tutorial intends for you to start simply with a community topology that has one system as a dedicated publisher and community manager and all other systems configured as targets.

Step four - verify that all systems in the community are active. Deliver a sample package and view the receipts.

Create the community (Step two)

On the community manager open a command window and enter the Everserve interactive shell by typing "everserve" at the shell prompt. Type a ? into the interactive shell to get a list of all the Everserve commands and their syntax. The commands listed in this section assume that you will use the interactive shell. Alternatively, you can use a standard OS shell prompt by prepending "everserve" as you type each of the commands. Values enclosed in angle brackets < > are not literal. You must substitute the correct value in place of the bracketed values.

Begin by creating the community manager peer. Later you will execute the create peer command at least once for every system you want to participate in the community. If any of these systems is to have more than one role in the community, a peer must be created (and subsequently added into the community) for each role. At the Everserve prompt of the command shell type the following commands:

create peer -p cm -h <hostname> -d “community manager”

The required arguments to this command are -p for the peer name "cm" and the -h "hostname" flag for the community manager system's hostname or ip address. The -d flag denotes an optional description for this peer.

create community -c community1 -p cm -d “1st community”

The create community command opens a seed file and adds the community manager peer to a newly created community. The required -c parameter specifies a community name, "community1" in this example. The community manager peername is cm. Once again, the -d flag denotes an optional description for this community. Note that peer names and community names are case sensitive alphanumeric strings. They can contain whitespace or symbols when enclosed in quotes. Complete details of the syntax for all Everserve commands can be found in the Everserve System Administrator Guide

create peer -p pub -h <hostname> -d “community publisher”

The community will need a publisher. In this example the community manager system also functions as the publisher for the community. This requires that two peers be created for the same system since a peer can have only one role assigned to it. A system may host more than one peer. This create peer command is similar to what was used for the community manager peer named cm.

add peer -p pub -c community1 -r publisher

Earlier, the create community command automatically added the community manager peer. The "add peer" command is needed here to assign the role of publisher to the peer named pub that was just created in the community named community1. Now it is time to create all the peers and get all the systems added into the community so that they can join following Everserve installation.

You should have the list of hostnames (or ip addresses) that was created to prepare for Everserve installation. You will execute a "create peer" command on the community manager for each of the entries in the list.

create peer -p <peername> -h <host address> -d “peer description”

Substitute a unique peername along with the appropriate host address for each of the systems on the list. Peer names can be the same as hostnames. The description parameter is optional. Useful descriptions might include the peer's role or physical location.

For each of the peers created with the host list on the community manager you must execute an add peer command. If the -r parameter is left off of the commandline the default role of target is assigned to the newly added peer.


add peer -p <peername> -c community1 -r <publisher | relay | community manager | target>

Community creation can be done with scripting. Synchron Networks' tech support can provide sample scripts. Once all of the peers are created and added you can validate the peer names assigned to hostnames in the community by executing the a "show" command on the community manager. Verify all systems from the list were added with the following command:
show peers

Install targets and join (Step three)

The community manager now has a fully populated community. Other systems will need a copy of the community manager's seed file to initiate other new peers into the Everserve community. The seed file will be found in the server subdirectory of the Everserve installation base directory. The default directory location on Windows is "C:/Program Files/Synchron Networks/Everserve/server". On Solaris the directory is "/usr/local/synchron/server". The seed file in this example will be named community1.zip. Copy the file onto a floppy disk or to a network location that can be reached by all peers.

Working from station to station, install the appropriate Everserve role onto the community peers. When the system comes back from the reboot that is part of installation you must execute the join command to make the peer active. First, copy the seed file to the same location that it came from on the community manager; the default directory location on Windows is "C:/Program Files/Synchron Networks/Everserve/server". On Solaris the directory is "/usr/local/synchron/server". Next you execute the join command in an OS shell or the Everserve interactive shell. The syntax for the join command is:

join -c community1

A system only needs to join the community once; all of the peers created with the system's hostname will join the community at the same time. The -c parameter "community1" is the name of the community that was created earlier and matches the name of the seed file (without the .zip extension).

Note: The community manager must be up and running Everserve's JMS Server whenever a peer tries to join the community.

Following the execution of join you can return to the community manager/publisher system, initiate a delivery and verify the results.

Verify the peers and deliver (Step four)

The "show" command reviewed earlier will list the systems in a community. If the -c parameter is used with "show peers" then additional data will be output to show each joined peer as "active". In order to check your work with community creation and validate the correctness of the peer's join command execute the following Everserve command:

show peers -c community1

Review the output and verify that all of the peers are active and ready to execute their first package. An example package that is included with the Everserve installation can be sent to check the Everserve version installed on each system in the community. On the publisher/community manager system execute the following command:

deliver -f SimpleTest.xml -i test1

This command will send the package described in the SimpleTest.xml file and associate the receipts sent back from each peer with the identifier string "test1". The next command will verify that the package was delivered to all peers and executed without errors.

show receipts -v

If you have the time and energy, look at the packages directory found in the server subdirectory of the Synchron base installation. There you can view the contents of the SimpleTest.xml file. You can modify the xml package specification templates found on the installation CD, place the modified files in the Everserve packages directory and continue making Everserve deliveries.

Now have a look at the Graphical User Interface, Everweb