Coming primarily from a Unix background, I’ve remained disappointed for 10+ years that NetWorker’s init script has barely changed in that time. Or rather, the only things that have really changed in the script are checks for additional software – e.g., Legato License Manager.
It’s frustrating, in a pesky sort of way, that in all this time the engineers at EMC have never bothered to implement a restart function within the script.
For just about every Unix platform in NetWorker, the only arguments that /etc/init.d/networker takes are:
- stop – stop the NetWorker services
- start – start the NetWorker services
That’s it. Once, a long time ago, I got frustrated, and hacked on the NetWorker init script to include a restart option, one that worked with the following logic:
- Issued a stop command.
- Waited 30 seconds.
- Checked to see if there were any NetWorker daemons still running.
- If there were NetWorker daemons still running, warn the user and abort.
- If there were no NetWorker daemons still running, issue a start command.
Over time, I got tired of inserting this hack back into the init scripts after every upgrade or reinstall, and in time even gave up keeping it around. Call it laziness or apathy on my part, but whatever you want to label it, the same applies to first Legato, then EMC engineering for not adding this absolute basic and practically expected functionality after all these years.
Is there an RFE for this? I don’t know, but logically there should be no need for one. As systems have matured, the restart option has effectively become a default/expected setting on most platforms for init scripts. NetWorker has sadly lagged behind and still requires the administrator to manually run the stop and the start, one after the other.
A minor quibble, I know, but nevertheless a quibble.
I’m glad someone else feels the same way. Now how to we file an RFE for this? 😉
Actually you can request an enhancement through powerlink but you need some sort of special support contract for that.
I’m not yet confident of that RFE system in PowerLink. I submitted a request for enhancement via that system over a month ago, and various support managers and support staff are still looking for it based on the tracking number I received.
For this reason I tend to continue to submit RFEs via cases – e.g., logging a question case along the lines of “Does an RFE exist for X, if not can it be created?” This process flows much more smoothly.