In CA Watchdog :Use of the logical name SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME on HP Integrity servers.

Products

• System Watchdog for OpenVMS

Issue/Introduction

The CA System Watchdog agent will discover and monitor the network interface cards (NIC's) that are installed in the system; however, the NIC's two-letter device name prefix must match against a list of known prefixes that the agent is aware of, and that list of known device name prefixes is built-in to the agent. Since it is likely that new systems and network interfaces will be designed and released between releases of the CA System Watchdog product, a method for adding device name prefixes is designed into the agent; the method involves the use of a logical name, specifically SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME. A user can define the logical name to point to an equivalence name that is made up of a comma-separated list of two-letter NIC device name prefixes that are not present in the list of built-in prefixes. The agent will interrogate the logical name during initialization and augment the built-in prefix list so that the agent can monitor the NIC for errors.

Does the SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME logical need to be defined on HP Integrity servers in order for the Watchdog agent to monitor their network devices for errors?

Environment

OpenVMS I64 - all versions

Resolution

If the NIC's installed in your system have a two letter prefix of either "EI" or "EW", then it is not necessary to define the logical name since those two prefixes are already built-in to the agent. The latter is contrary to the information provided in the CA System Watchdog for OpenVMS Administrators Guide, which states:

The built-in list is "XQ, XE, ET, ES, EX". The logical name definition is in the same format as the built-in list.

On the other hand, if the NIC's installed in your system have a device name prefix that is something other than  "EI","EW',"XQ","XE","ET","ES", or "EX", then you must define the logical name SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME with an equivalence name consisting of  a comma-separated list of prefixes. What follows are two hypothetical examples of how the logical name would be defined for NIC's with device name  prefixes of "EN" and "EV". Note that the logical name must be defined before before the CA System Watchdog agent startup procedure, USW$AGENT$STARTUP.COM, is called.

Example #1:

If you have a NIC named  ENA0:, then you must add the following command to your system startup procedures.:

$ DEFINE/SYSTEM SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME "EN"

Example #2:

If you also have a NIC with a device name prefix of EVA0: in addition to the one named ENA0:, the command to define the logical name is as follows:

$ DEFINE/SYSTEM SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME "EN,EV"

Again, the above examples above are hypothetical.

 

Additional Information

The built-in list was augmented several years ago to include the device name prefixes of "EW" and "EI"; however, that fact was not reflected in product's user documentation.

Furthermore, the agent startup procedure, namely USW$AGENT$STARTUP.COM, contains a template DCL ASSIGN command that could also be used to define the SNS$ADD_ETHERNET_DEVNAME logical name; however, we do not recommend editing USW$AGENT$STARTUP.COM since that procedure may be replaced by patch kits or new releases and you will lose your modifications.