Preinstallation Planning

Before you start installing Meta-Directory you should make sure your system is capable of supporting it. In this section we'll describe some steps to take before installation.

There are 4 steps in this procedure.

In actual customer environments, preinstallation planning would involve a lot more than simply checking system requirements. Most of the effort would be directed at determining which groups act as authoritative sources for all the attributes in the MetaView. Preinstallation planning is covered in much more detail in the Meta-Directory Implementation and Configuration lecture-based course.

If your system is using Service Pack 5 you'll have to reinstall Windows NT. There is no easy way to "downgrade" from Service pack 5 to Service Pack 4.

The installation procedures in this module are for Windows NT v4 only. Meta-Directory 1.0 isn't supported on Solaris, but version 4 is.

Step 1: Verify minimum platform requirements

Before you install a demo version of Meta-Directory 1.0 on your system, make sure it meets these minimum requirements:

  • Your system must be running Windows NT v4
  • You must have at least 128 MB of RAM. Obviously, the more RAM you have the better.
  • You'll need at least a Pentium 2 processor or the equivalent

If your system doesn't meet these requirements, you won't be able to install Meta-Directory 1.0. You will however, be able to get a preview of the installation process by stepping through the rest of this module.


Step 2: Check the Service Pack version

You can check the Service Pack version on your system by selecting the main Windows Start menu, then Programs, then launch Windows NT Explorer. Pull down the Help menu and select About Windows NT. The Disk Administrator window will show you the Service Pack version you're using.

If your system isn't using Service Pack 4, you won't be able to install Meta-Directory 1.0.


Step 3: Check available disk space

You can check for free disk space by selecting the main Windows Start menu, then Programs, then Administrative Tools, then Disk Administrator. This window will show you the amount of free disk space and the format type (FAT or NTFS).


Figure 4.2

You'll need about 300 MB free on an NTFS drive in order to install Meta-Directory 1.0, Directory Server 4.11, and Perl 5. If you don't have enough free disk space, you won't be able to perform the procedures in this module or the next.

If you have enough free disk space but the space is on a FAT-formatted drive, you can convert that dirve to NTFS in the next step.


Step 4: (Optional) Convert a FAT drive To NTFS

If necessary, you can convert a FAT drive to NTFS by opening a Command Prompt window and running this command:

convert D: /FS:NTFS.

In this example, drive D is being converted from FAT to NTFS.

Summary

In this section we made sure our system is running Windows NT v4 with Service Pack 4. We also verified that we had enough disk space on a NTFS-formatted drive to install the Meta-Directory software. This may have required us to convert a FAT drive to NTFS.

In the next section we'll download all the software we need to demonstrate iMD onto the NTFS drive.

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