How to install NetBackup 7.0 on Ubuntu 10.04

NetBackup 7 officially “supports” Ubuntu Linux 8.04, 9.04, and 10.04 for Linux clients, as seen in the Software Compatibility List but the installer doesn’t “work”.

Specifically, the problem seems to be that PBX, or Private Branch Exchange, is distributed in an RPM package along with the client.  The normal shell script that installs the client kicks an error when PBX fails to install:

Installing PBX... ./installpbx: 1510: rpm: not found
 ERROR: Could not install VRTSpbx package
 Please see installation log for more details
 Installation log located here: 
/var/tmp/installpbx-1928-100810135211.log

 Installing PBX was unsuccessful.
 Aborting ...

Opening the next log reveals more:

[10-08-10-13:52:11] Extracting 
/var/tmp/VRTSpbx_1928/PBX.tar.gz into 
/var/tmp/VRTSpbx_1928
[10-08-10-13:52:11] Installing/Upgrading private branch 
exchange on Linux
[10-08-10-13:52:11] Checking for the PBX process...
[10-08-10-13:52:11] PBX process is not running.
[10-08-10-13:52:11] rpm -U --nodeps --nopostun --nopreun
/var/tmp/VRTSpbx_1928/VRTSpbx-1.4.0.10-10.RH_x86_64.rpm
./installpbx: 1568: rpm: not found
[10-08-10-13:52:11] ERROR: Could not install VRTSpbx 
package
[10-08-10-13:52:11] Removing temporary directory
[10-08-10-13:52:11] rm -rf /var/tmp/VRTSpbx_1928
[10-08-10-13:52:11] installpbx exiting with return 
code: 1
[10-08-10-13:52:11] Please see installation log for more 
details
[10-08-10-13:52:11] Installation log located here:
/var/tmp/installpbx-1928-100810135211.log

As this isn’t Red Hat, rpm is not present on the system, nor would it work if it was…

With the help of the folks at Symantec, here’s what will get around this problem and help you install the client.  Hopefully they’ll put this online in a tech note soon, but I’m guessing I’m not the only person who ran into this problem, so here are my notes.  I am not a Linux wizard, by any means, but here are the required steps to make this work.  This also requires you to install alien, a package that’ll let you install rpm packages on Ubuntu:

Get the giant 7.0 client tarball and copy it to your server.  I downloaded mine from FileConnect.

gunzip NetBackup_7.0_CLIENTS_GA.tar.gz.gz

tar xvf NetBackup_7.0_CLIENTS_GA.tar.gz

cd NB_7.0_CLIENTS_GA/NBClients/anb/Clients/usr/openv/netbackup/client/Linux/RedHat2.6

sudo mkdir /tmp/pbx

sudo cp PBX.tar.gz /tmp/pbx

cd /tmp/pbx

sudo gzip -dv PBX.tar.gz

sudo tar xvf PBX.tar

sudo apt-get install alien

sudo alien -i --scripts VRTSpbx-1.4.0.10-10.RH_x86_64.rpm
(you will see lots of errors, you can ignore them)

Then start PBX on the CLIENT:
sudo /opt/VRTSpbx/bin/vxpbx_exchanged start

sudo nano NB_7.0_CLIENTS_GA/NBClients/anb/Clients/usr/openv/netbackup/client/Linux/RedHat2.6/cp_to_client

Comment out lines 1723 - 1732 by inserting a # at the start of the line (use Control-W in nano to search for PBX to help locate this):

  1723 #       ${ECHO} " 
  1724 #Installing PBX..." 
  1725 
  1726 #       ${SOURCE_DIR}/installpbx -f PBX.tar.gz 
  1727 #       if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then 
  1728                 ${ECHO} " 
  1729 #Installing PBX was unsuccessful. 
  1730 #Aborting ..." 
  1731 #               exit 1 
  1732 #       fi

Hit Control-X to save and exit.

Then execute the "install" script in /NB_7.0_CLIENTS_GA

Success!

You can then normally patch the client to version 7.01, as that won’t require you to use any RPM-based packages.  I've also heard that installing version 6.5.4, then upgrading from there to 7.0 will work too, as that version of PBX will install ok, but I haven’t tried it.