Computing a new baseline checksum for an inventory of configured files

After installation, you can verify the actual checksums of installed files against a bill of materials that ships with the product. After configuring your system, create a new checksum so that you can compare the system periodically to the new checksum. Use the result to analyze changes to your configured system.

After configuring the product, save a new baseline checksum to establish a new checksum standard for your system.

Overview

This topic describes using the installver command to create and compare an inventory of configured files to the currently installed files.

The installver tool can compute a new baseline checksum for the inventory of all files in the installation root directory. The tool stores the new checksum by default in the sys.inv file within the current working directory. You can specify a different file path and file name. Create the file outside of the installation root directory or exclude the file from comparisons.

Later, compare the checksums in the sys.inv file (or the file that you specified when creating the inventory) to the checksums of the currently installed files to see what files have changed.

The baseline checksum report identifies missing files, additional files, and changed files.

Procedure

• Create an inventory list of the files that are currently installed in the installation root directory:

  • installver -createinventory

  For example, the following messages might display on a Windows system when you issue the installver.bat -createinventory command to create the default app_server_root\bin\sys.inv file:

  W CWNVU0320W: [ivu] The
  C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServerV602\bin\sys.inv 
  inventory file is within the product installation root directory: 
  C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServerV602. 
  
  Create the file outside of the installation root directory to omit the file from the verification.
  I CWNVU0300I: [ivu] The total number of user excluded files found are 2.
  I CWNVU0300I: [ivu] The total number of IBM excluded files found are 78.
  I CWNVU0310I: [ivu] Creating the following inventory file: 
  C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServerV602\bin\sys.inv
  I CWNVU0460I: [ivu] The utility is running.

  When it finishes running, a completion message is displayed:

   I CWNVU0340I: [ivu] Done.

  The sys.inv contains the new inventory:

  #C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\
  #2005.10.10_06.24.06PM_EDT
  #user_ID
  #-createinventory -log
  241fe4e309abfd8f2c5911216dbabd61dd4751a6
    |_jvm\bin\appletviewer.exe
    |42032
    |2004.10.28 05.37.02AM EDT
  e00c6ea688ab67e004ec6cfac26ec48541a5b9ff
    |_jvm\bin\dbghelp.dll
    |712192
    |2004.10.28 05.36.50AM EDT
  916e244deeb44b9d3218aafa3b56c8680aa31f2f
    |_jvm\bin\extcheck.exe
    |42040
    |2004.10.28 05.37.02AM EDT
  ...
  7fc3bb38e8b90fed05cd0440953000c2cc965b44
    |web\spidocs\stylesheet.css
    |1240
    |2005.10.09 12.14.17AM EDT
  22706a0d900c52f1c015c870ddeee25581c5d57b
    |web\spidocs\toHTML\index.html
    |867
    |2005.10.09 12.14.17AM EDT
  

• Create the inventory file in a directory outside of the installation root directory to exclude the inventory file from the comparison.

  • installver -createinventory /tmp/system.inv

• Compare the inventory list to files that are currently installed in the installation root directory:

  • installver -compare

  If you created the inventory file somewhere other than the default location, use the following syntax:

  • installver -compare /tmp/system.inv

• Compare and display trace results:

  • installver -compare -trace

• Compare and exclude specified files from the inventory comparison:

  • installver -compare -exclude fn1;fn2;fn3;...

• Compare and include only specified files in the inventory comparison:

  • installver -compare -include fn1;fn2;fn3;...

Results

When you issue an installver commands from the app_server_root/bin directory, the status of the command is displayed on the terminal console. To create a log, use the -log parameter.

What to do next

See the description of the installver command for explanations of each parameter.

Go to Excluding files from a checksum comparison to learn more about the installver command.

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