Big Brother - UNIX/Linux Installation

BBPE UNIX/Linux Management server
Big Brother should be installed by root and should have its own operating system user (usually bb) to run the software. On most UNIXs you can use the following commands to create the BB user:

  • useradd -d /home/bb -c "Big Brother" -s /bin/sh bb


    • Now give the bb user a password by executing:

  • passwd bb



    • Now that the bb operating system user has been created you'll need to download the Big Brother Professional Edition software and get it installed.

    These procedures are for installing Big Brother Professional Edition v4.20 on Solaris (Sparc) 5.10, other UNIX/Linux platforms will have the same procedures.

    1. Download the BBSVR-solaris5.10-sparc-bb4.20-bbpe.tar (the name may be different depending on where you downloaded from) tarball and save it on the Desktop of your PC. (I downloaded the BBServer and BBClient for Solaris 10 (Sparc) directly from Quest Software's SupportLink)



    2. FTP the tarball from your desktop to the destination Big Brother management server.
    (I always use a command prompt, but, you may use whatever FTP tool you're most familiar with)

  • Open a command prompt and change directories to your Desktop, then, FTP the BBServer tarball from your Desktop to the destination machine. From your command prompt execute the following commands highlighted in the image below:



    3. Telnet, or, SSH (login) to the bbserver as the bb user, verify that the BBServer tarball exists, then, untar it! From the same command prompt execute the following commands highlighted in the image below:

    NOTE: If telnet is not available, you can use putty, or, ssh and the procedures will be the same.

    4. After the tarball has been inflated, change directories to the Big Brother "install" (bb4.20-bbpe/install) directory:

  • cd bb4.20-bbpe/install


    • Now, switch users to root:

  • su root


    • Execute the bbconfig installation script:

  • ./bbconfig




    • The installation begins with the Software License Agreement and you must accept the license before the installation will continue. After you accept the license agreement, the configuration begins as highlighted in the image below:



  • The bbconfig script does a very good job of determining your operating system, as seen above, Solaris was detected so you can hit enter to accept the default.


  • The bbconfig script then asks for a Big Brother user. You should have already created the bb user, so, you can accept the default or enter the bbuser name.


  • The bbconfig script then asks which host will be the BBDISPLAY server. BB is pretty good at determining the FQDN of the host and you can more than likely accept the default. If the default value is not the BBDISPLAY host, type the correct FQDN and hit enter.


  • The bbconfig script then asks which host will be the BBPAGER server. BB will use the same BBDISPLAY host as default and you can more than likely accept the default and hit enter. If the default is not the BBPAGER host, enter the correct FQDN and hit enter.


  • The bbconfig script asks for an email address for sending notifications. Enter a valid email address for the BB administrator and hit enter.


  • The bbconfig script will ask for Apache's DocumentRoot directory. Most of the time the default value is wrong and you will need to enter the correct path to Apache's DocumentRoot directory. (How to find Apache's DocumentRoot)

  • The bbconfig script will ask for Apache's cgi-bin directory. Most of the time the default value is wrong and you will need to enter the correct path to Apache's cgi-bin directory. (How to find Apache's cgi-bin)

  • The bbconfig script will ask for the base URL of Apache's cgi-bin. This means, how does a browser find the cgi-bin directory, 99% of the time you will accept the default (just hit enter).


    • At this point the bbconfig script goes to work and set's up the basic configuration for Big Brother, creates a device configuration file (bb-hosts), sets up some permissions and installs the cgi-bin scripts.



  • The final leg of the BBServer install asks you to enter the OS username that owns the Apache software and which group that user is in. You can find out who owns the Apache software by executing the following command:

    ps -ef|grep http

  • After entering the Apache software owner and group, the bbconfig script displays "Congratulations..." and a messages that says to hit RETURN to continue.


  • You're then asked if you want to start the Big Brother software; type 'y' to start BB and the script completes.


    • Congratulations, you're now a Brother! You can view your BBDISPLAY by pointing your favorite browser to http://bbserver/bb (Replace bbserver with the hostname of your BBServer machine).

    Now, you need to install a BBPE client on the BBServer machine to monitor local system information like cpu, disk space, processes, log files and more...