Hello and welcome to the SAP HANA Academy.
You are watching the video tutorial series: Building Solutions - Live 5.
The topic of this video tutorial is Initial Setup - date and YaST.
Hi, I am Denys van Kempen.
In this video, we are going to make sure that our HANA express server is running with the
correct time and we will be using the SUSE Linux administration tool YaST for that.
This video is optional.
For those not familiar, YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) is the SUSE Linux equivalent of
Windows Settings / Control Panel, or System Preferences on the Mac.
Let’s first connect to the HANA server with HANA operating system administration account,
hxeadm.
This is the superuser for HANA but not for Linux, not for the operating system.
When we execute the ‘yast’ command, we are informed that yast is in usr sbin, so
running it may require superuser privileges.
When you execute the command, YaST Control Center starts but you only see modules that
do not require root privileges.
Basically, you can register the product and view the release notes.
You navigate in YaST with the [Tab] key, with [alt] plus character, the ones you see in
yellow, and with function keys.
So, in this screen [alt]+Q and [F9] will do the same thing: quit.
Very similar to the MS-DOS screens from the early 90s for those old enough to remember.
If you see characters instead of lines, you need to modify the Window > Translation settings
of PuTTY.
Use the ISO setting that matches your Microsoft Windows environment, Latin1 for example, and
not UTF8.
This is a per session setting, so make sure to save it for your HANA express session.
To run YaST as root, enter the command: sudo (superuser do) yast.
This will open the YaST Control Center again.
To the left, we have the categories and on the right the modules.
Quit
With ‘yast -l’ for list, you can query the modules, so for example, we can run ‘yast
timezone’ on the command line to go straight to the module at hand.
The modules are easy to remember, so this will save you some searching and navigating
in YaST.
So, let’s set this up.
Use the arrow keys to navigate.
Arrow up, for example, from Global to Europe.
[Tab] or [alt]+Z to go the Time Zone selector, and then arrow down to select your country.
I am in the Netherlands here, so I will pick that.
Date and time now switch to the current values and formatting for my time zone.
Then, use [alt]+S to open the [Other Settings…] screen.
Here we have the possibility to synchronise the HANA server with a public time server.
If your system is connected to the internet, this makes sense.
With [alt]+S you can enable or disable this option
and for Server Address you can use pool.ntp.org, for example.
There are may others, it is just a time server.
Confirm with [F10]
We get back to the Clock and Time Zone screen.
Confirm with [F10]
And we are done.
With the ‘date’ command, you can also verify and set the date, of course.
It is the same thing.
Now, for those allergic to terminal screens, you could, if you wanted,
install the X-Window System pattern.
You will need to register your server with SUSE Linux first for this, go the website
for a 3-month trial license or sign up for a full license, of course.
Remember, this is SUSE Linux, not openSUSE, so this is licensed software.
Registering your server will configure the required repositories for you and you can
then easily install the X Window System pattern.
On Windows, then, you will need a tool to display X-Windows screens.
Xming can do this, for example
and then, we need to configure PuTTY to ‘Enable X11 forwarding’
and now, when we run yast2, we get the graphical version.
Click once and the clock and time zone editor will open.
So now you can configure the same settings with the mouse.
Of course, a graphical Windowing system will add some overhead.
Needs a bit of CPU, a bit of memory.
May not be such a good idea after all on an in-memory database server like HANA express
on limited resources,
but it is possible.
Another advantage is that you can run the graphical versions of HANA tools like
SAP HANA Lifecycle Management, hdblcmgui, so you can rename your system.
For example, if you want to change the SID, instance number of computer name,
or if you want to install and add components.
But again, you can do this on the command line as well with hdblcm.
OK
So much for keeping time and using YaST.
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