The IBM NetVista IDF Builder and SDF Creator Utility only creates flash images. It does not perform the update of the flash card. However, below is information about updating the flash once your IDF is built.The program which handles the updating of the client machine is Linux Client Management Agent, or lcma. This program will compare the IDF which exists on the flash with the one of the same name on the server. If there are no differences between the packages, there will be no update performed. If the server has an IDF which matches the name of the one on the client, but whose contents are different, an update will occur. The client will grab the information from the server about the new packages to install and begin copying the packages to flash. If the IDF contains updated packages, lcma will upgrade those packages on the flash.
The Linux Client file system uses compression when writing data to the flash card. Uncompressed data from the server is generally compressed to 50% of its original size.
The lcma program also supports a method to force an update down to the client which will ignore whatever IDF exists, if any, on the client. The entire IDF will be copied without any comparison checking.
For usage information, run ./lcma --help.
The lcma program can be utilized in a number of different manners.
- Automatic invocation at client boot time.
- Manual invocation on the command line.
- Remote administration using SNMP through a MIB browser. The MIB variable used to invoke lcma is tcLinuxCMA.
- Remote administration using the Flash Update task of the IBM NetVista Thin Client Manager Operations Utility. For more information on the IBM NetVista Thin Client Manager Operations Utility, see the reference publication at http://www.ibm.com/nc/pubs.