Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Configuring a System
Reconfiguring the Kernel (HP-UX 11i Version 2)
Chapter 3320
Other Kernel Configuration Operations
Other sections below describe some special kernel configuration
operations and special uses of the kernel configuration commands.
The usage of some kernel resources can be monitored, with alarms
delivered when usage rises above a set threshold. These alarms can be
configured and reviewed using the kcalarm command or the kcweb tool.
The resource usages can be reviewed using the kcusage command or the
kcweb tool. For more information, see “Monitoring Kernel Resource
Usage” on page 346.
Administrators of older versions of HP-UX may be accustomed to using
text files (“system files” or “dfiles”) to specify kernel configurations and
make changes to them. The format of these files has been enhanced
1
to
accommodate new kernel configuration innovations, while retaining the
usefulness of a text file for configuration operations. (They are
particularly useful when using the same configuration on multiple
systems, since they can be easily moved between systems.) The use of
system files is described in “Managing Configurations with System Files”
on page 356.
Some uncommon configuration settings can be controlled only through
the use of system files. These include the setting of the primary swap
device, the setting of the initial dump devices, and the explicit binding of
specific devices to specific device driver modules. For more information,
see “Managing Device Bindings” on page 359.
All kernel configuration changes made using the kernel configuration
commands are logged to the file /var/adm/kc.log. Details about this log
file can be found in “The Kernel Configuration Log File” on page 362, and
the kconfig (5) and kclog (1M) manpages.
The primary kernel configuration commands support a specialized
output format that is designed for use by scripts and applications that
need to parse the output of the commands. Such scripts and applications
must use this specialized output format since HP does not guarantee
release-to-release compatibility for any other output format of these
commands. More detail is available in “Parsing Command Output” on
page 363and the kconfig (5) manpage.
1. The system file formats from previous releases of HP-UX are still
accepted.