Veritas Cluster Server Cluster Manager (VRTScscm) 7.4.1 on Linux

January 04, 2022

I'm still using VCS/Infoscale for parts of my homelab. This allows me to sometimes catch issues ([1], [2] and [3]) that others have not found before.

The Legacy GUI

One way to administer VCS with a GUI is to use the VCS gui (hagui).

Unfortunately, the rpm of VRTScscm which was provided by Veritas is quite dated and on my RHEL systems, it tends to 'freeze' from time to time.

I recently noticed that while VRTScscm hadn't been updated since the 6.0.z times, a few updates had been released for Windows platforms only:

When I tried the 7.4.1 Windows version on Win10, it worked a lot better than the 6.0.1 Linux version (no freezes, etc..) so I decided to investigate if I could update the Linux version with the bits from the Windows version.

Interestingly, it turned out to be quite easy.. Updating the JARs from the Linux version with the GUI JARs from the Windows version delivered a working 7.4.1 on Linux. (and no more GUI freezes!). Java is cross-platform and this is clearly one of the benefits here..

Re-packaging the VRTSvxvm binary rpm from Veritas

Being the RHEL person I am, I decided not to stop there and build a newer rpm with:

- the same rpm name as the previous one from VRTS which would allow to rpm update the old script.

- include the payloads from the 6.0.1 rpm, the updates from 7.4.1 and an updated 'hagui' script (to avoid complaining on OpenJDK being used and to increase the java RAM a bit..).

Again, as soon as I had the proper binary tarballs/zips, it proved to be quite easy.. A simple SPEC file and 20 minutes later I had an updated VRTScscm rpm.