There are six basic steps to using AcuServer® file server software in a Windows environment.
- Install AcuServer. If you have not already installed AcuServer on your Windows NT, or Windows 2000 - 2008 server, see Windows Installation Requirements and Installing a Windows NT/2000/2003/2008 Server for a list of installation requirements and procedures. If AcuServer is already installed, proceed to the next step.
There is nothing on the AcuServer distribution media to install on the client machine. However, you should ensure that every
client system that will use AcuServer has a licensed copy of an ACUCOBOL-GT® runtime, and you may need to set up client passwords,
user names, and host names. See Installing the Client for more information.
- Set up user and/or group accounts. Decide how users will access resources on the server machine (individual accounts or group accounts). See
Setting Up Accounts for more information. Create the user accounts and grant user rights, including access to the server from the network.
- Edit the AcuAccess file on the server.
AcuServer will not start if the
server access file cannot be found. By default, this file is named
AcuAccess and is located in the
c:\etc directory. If your server’s operating system is located on a drive other than
c, AcuServer will look for the AcuAccess file in the
\etc directory on the drive containing the operating system.
See Creating or Opening an Access File for step-by-step instructions for configuring the access file. See The Server Access File for general information about the file.
- If you choose to implement AcuServer system security, each record in the server access file should contain client machine
name, client username, local username, and umask data. Passwords may also be defined if desired.
- If you choose to implement Windows security (recommended) rather than AcuServer system security, the access records need only
contain client machine, username, and if using the LOGON option, password data.
Note: On Windows 2008 it is essentially required that you use the operating system’s security methods. This is mainly due to a new
security layer called User Account Control (UAC). Consult Windows Help for information on how UAC impacts file and program
access.
If the access file is not owned by Administrator or the Administrators group, or is writable by users that do not have Administrator
privileges, AcuServer will not start.
- Create or modify the directory structure that will be used by AcuServer clients. Ensure that user accounts have FULL CONTROL access to the directory containing the data and object files. If files already
exist, modify the permissions for each file to give the users FULL CONTROL access.
- Configure the AcuServer system. AcuServer system configuration consists of:
- Assigning values to the runtime configuration variables. With the exception of the FILE_PREFIX and possibly CODE_PREFIX variables,
none of the runtime configuration variables requires modification. See Runtime Configuration Variables for information about runtime configuration variables.
- Assigning values to the AcuServer configuration variables. Most of the server configuration variables require no modification;
however, you may want to modify them to gain control over or initiate certain functions like file locking, multiple-record
mode, or error trace flushing. If you want to implement Windows security rather than AcuServer system security, you must set
the
SECURITY_METHOD variable in both the runtime and server configuration files. If running on Windows 2008, using Windows security is essentially
required. See Server Configuration Variables for information about server configuration variables.
- Modifying your runtime configuration file or application code to use remote name notation. To use AcuServer, your applications
must use remote name notation to refer to files located on the server. The ACUCOBOL-GT runtime looks for remote name notation
to identify requests to AcuServer. On Windows NT/2000-2008 servers, the format for this notation is
@servername:drive-letter:\pathname. You may add a remote path to the FILE_PREFIX or CODE_PREFIX configuration variables. Alternatively, you can define file
name aliases in the runtime configuration file. A file name alias is a string that will replace the literal name in the ASSIGN
TO clause of a SELECT statement.
See Accessing Remote Files for more information on remote name notation.
- Issue AcuServer commands.
AcuServer requests are handled by the
acuserve service running on the server. You can use the Windows AcuServer Control Panel or the command line to start and stop AcuServer
(the
acuserve service), retrieve AcuServer operation status, unlock stranded files, and create and maintain the server access file. See
Administrator Utilities and Functions for details about the AcuServer Control Panel and the
acuserve command.
Note: To use the AcuServer Control Panel on Windows 2008 where UAC is turned on (as it is by default), any user must choose
Run as Administrator in order to use the various Acuserver utilities. UAC can be turned off, in which case the user must merely be a member of
the administrators group in order to fully operate AcuServer.
Be aware that configuration of AcuServer system security is very important to safeguarding your data files and network computers.
See the security information in System Security before placing AcuServer into open service.