Overview

Upgrading NMIS to 8.5.2G is extremely simple: all you need to do is follow the guidance of the interactive installation script, which will perform all the necessary steps that are safely automatable.

Please note that the installer script does not overwrite your existing models or configuration items for safety reasons, so a (semi-)manual comparison of your local changes (if any) will still be required. For your convenience the installer does save a compressed backup snapshot of your NMIS configuration in root's home directory, and a log of the actions performed is saved in install.log in the NMIS source directory.

Procedure

Once you've unpacked the NMIS tarball you will see install.pl in the NMIS source directory. Running ./install.pl -h will show you what options it offers.

A simple invocation of ./install.pl will prompt you for a few bits of necessary information and confirmations, after which the tool will backup your current NMIS installation and then perform the upgrade or installation steps. 

Once the installer has finished its  work you will likely need to review your config and model files and determine whether there are any customizations that you need to merge with newer files from the NMIS tarball. NMIS live configuration files are in /usr/local/nmis8/conf, the updated material from the release is in /usr/local/nmis8/install; for models the directories are /usr/local/nmis8/models for the active ones and /usr/local/nmis8/models-install for new ones.

To simplify the comparison and merging process NMIS provides the helper program admin/diffconfigs.pl. As an example, to check your Config.nmis against the one included with a new NMIS release you would use the tool like this:

cd /usr/local/nmis8
./admin/diffconfigs.pl install/Config.nmis conf/Config.nmis

Comparing install/Config.nmis to conf/Config.nmis
Output format:

"Config Key Path:
-       Status in install/Config.nmis
+       Status in conf/Config.nmis"

/system/threshold_period-pkts_hc:
-       -15 minutes
+       -5 minutes
...possibly lots more changes...
Difference Summary:
        /authentication/auth_user_name_regex
        /system/threshold_period-interface
        /system/threshold_period-pkts
        /system/threshold_period-pkts_hc

The diffconfigs tool also works for model files.

 

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