Previous Table of Contents Index Next
Perforce 2009.2: System Administrator's Guide



Chapter 1
Welcome to Perforce: Installing and Upgrading
This chapter describes how to install a Perforce server or upgrade an existing installation.
This chapter includes a brief overview of things to consider at installation time, along with some basic security and administration tips. More detailed information on administrative tasks is found in later chapters.
Where the UNIX and Windows versions of Perforce differ, this manual notes the difference. For Windows-specific information, see Perforce and Windows.
Many of the examples in this book are based on the UNIX version of the Perforce server. In most cases, the examples apply equally to both Windows and UNIX installations.
The material for UNIX also applies to Mac OS X.
Getting Perforce
Perforce requires at least two executables: the server (p4d), and at least one Perforce client program (such as p4 on UNIX, or p4.exe on Windows).
The server and client executables are available from the Downloads page on the Perforce web site:
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/downloads/index.html
Go to the web page, select the files for your platform, and save the files to disk.
UNIX installation
Although you can install p4 and p4d in any directory, on UNIX, the Perforce client programs typically reside in /usr/local/bin, and the Perforce server is usually located either in /usr/local/bin or in its own server root directory. You can install Perforce client programs on any machine that has TCP/IP access to the p4d host.
To limit access to the Perforce server files, ensure that the p4d executable is owned and run by a Perforce user account that has been created for the purpose of running the Perforce server.
To start using Perforce:
1.
Download the p4 and p4d files for your platform from the Perforce web site.
2.
Make the downloaded p4 and p4d files executable.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Specify the name or TCP/IP address of the Perforce server machine and the p4d port number to the Perforce client programs by setting the P4PORT environment variable.
Downloading the files and making them executable
On UNIX (or Mac OS X), you must make the Perforce executables (p4 and p4d) executable. After you download the programs, use the chmod command to make them executable, as follows:
chmod +x p4
chmod +x p4d
Creating a Perforce server root directory
The Perforce server stores all user-submitted files and system-generated metadata in files and subdirectories beneath its own root directory. This directory is called the server root.
To specify a server root, either set the environment variable P4ROOT to point to the server root, or use the -r root_dir flag when invoking p4d. Perforce client programs never use the P4ROOT directory or environment variable; the p4d server is the only process that uses the P4ROOT variable.
Because all Perforce files are stored beneath the server root, the contents of the server root grow over time. See Installation and administration tips for a brief overview of diskspace requirements, and Disk space allocation for more detail.
A Perforce server requires no privileged access; there is no need to run p4d as root or any other privileged user. For more information, see UNIX: Run p4d as a nonprivileged user.
The server root can be located anywhere, but the account that runs p4d must have read, write, and execute permissions on the server root and all directories beneath it. For security purposes, set the umask(1) file-creation-mode mask of the account that runs p4d to a value that denies other users access to the server root directory.
Telling Perforce servers which port to listen on
The p4d server and Perforce client programs communicate with each other using TCP/IP. When p4d starts, it listens (by default) on port 1666. The Perforce client assumes (also by default) that its p4d server is located on a host named perforce, listening on port 1666.
If p4d is to listen on a different port, either specify that port with the -p port_num flag you start p4d (as in, p4d -p 1818), or set the port with the P4PORT environment or registry variable.
Unlike P4ROOT, the environment variable P4PORT is used by both the Perforce server and the Perforce client programs, so it must be set on both Perforce server machines and Perforce client workstations.
Telling Perforce client programs which port to connect to
Perforce client programs need to know on what machine the p4d server resides and on which TCP/IP port the p4d server program is listening. Set each Perforce user's P4PORT environment variable to host:port, where host is the name of the machine on which p4d is running, and port is the number of the port on which p4d is listening.
Examples:
Perforce client programs connect to the p4d server on host dogs listening on port 3435.
Perforce client programs connect to the p4d server on host x.com listening on port 1818.
If the Perforce client program is running on the same host as p4d, only the p4d port number need be provided in P4PORT. If p4d is running on a host named or aliased perforce, and is listening on port 1666, leave P4PORT unset. For example:
Perforce client programs connect to the p4d server on the same machine as the client program, listening on port 3435.
Perforce client programs connect to the p4d server on a host named or aliased perforce listening on port 1666.
If your p4d host is not named perforce, you can simplify life somewhat for your Perforce users by setting perforce as an alias to the true host name in your users' workstations' /etc/hosts files, or by using Sun's NIS or Internet DNS.
If your network environment and Perforce Server have been configured to support Zeroconf services, users can set P4PORT to the value of the service name.
Starting the Perforce server
After you set p4d's P4PORT and P4ROOT environment variables, start the server by running p4d in the background with the command:
p4d &
Although the example shown is sufficient to run p4d, you can specify other flags that control such things as error logging, checkpointing, and journaling.
Example: Starting a Perforce server
You can override P4PORT by starting p4d with the -p flag, and P4ROOT by starting p4d with the -r flag. Similarly, you can specify a journal file with the -J flag, and an error log file with the -L flag. A startup command that overrides the environment variables might look like this:
The -r, -J, and -L flags (and others) are discussed in Supporting Perforce: Backup and Recovery. A complete list of server flags is provided in the Perforce Server (p4d) Reference.
Stopping the Perforce server
To shut down a Perforce server, use the command:
p4 admin stop
Only a Perforce superuser can use p4 admin stop.
If you are running a release of Perforce from earlier than 99.2, you must find the process ID of the p4d server and kill the process manually from the UNIX shell. Use kill -15 (SIGTERM) instead of kill -9 (SIGKILL), because p4d might leave the database in an inconsistent state if it is in the middle of updating a file when a SIGKILL signal is received.
Windows installation
To install Perforce on Windows, use the Perforce installer (perforce.exe) from the Downloads page of the Perforce web site:
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/downloads/index.html
Use the Perforce installer program to install or upgrade the Perforce Server, Perforce Proxy, or the Perforce Command-Line Client.
Other Perforce clients on Windows, such as the Perforce Visual Client (P4V), as well as third-party plug-ins, may be downloaded and installed separately.
For more about installing on Windows, see Using the Perforce installer.
Windows services and servers
In this manual, the terms Perforce server and p4d are used interchangeably to refer to "the process which handles requests from Perforce client programs" unless the distinction between a Windows server process a Windows service process is relevant.
On UNIX systems, there is only one Perforce "server" program (p4d) responsible for this back-end task. On Windows, however, this back-end program can be configured to run as a Windows service (p4s.exe) process that starts at boot time, or as a server (p4d.exe) process that you invoke manually from a command prompt.
The Perforce service (p4s.exe) and the Perforce server (p4d.exe) executables are copies of each other; they are identical apart from their filenames. When run, the executables use the first three characters of the name with which they were invoked (either p4s or p4d) to determine their behavior. (For example, invoking copies of p4d.exe named p4smyservice.exe or p4dmyserver.exe invoke a service and a server, respectively.)
In most cases, it is preferable to install Perforce as a service, not a server. For a more detailed discussion of the distinction between services and servers, see Windows services vs. Windows servers.
Starting and stopping Perforce
If you install Perforce as a service under Windows, the service starts whenever the machine boots. Use the Services applet in the Control Panel to control the Perforce service's behavior.
If you install Perforce as a server under Windows, invoke p4d.exe from a command prompt. The flags for p4d under Windows are the same as those used under UNIX.
To stop a Perforce service (or server), use the command:
p4 admin stop
Only a Perforce superuser can use p4 admin stop.
For older revisions of Perforce, shut down services manually by using the Services applet in the Control Panel. Shut down servers running in command prompt windows by pressing CTRL-C in the window or by clicking the icon to close the command prompt window. Although manually shutting down in this way works with Release 99.2 and earlier versions of Perforce, it is not necessarily "clean", in the sense that the server or service is shut down abruptly. With the availability of the p4 admin stop command in 99.2, this manual shutdown method is obsolete.
Upgrading a Perforce server
You must back up your server (see Backup procedures) as part of any upgrade process.
Using old client programs with a new server
Although older Perforce client programs generally work with newer server versions, some features in new server releases require upgrades to Perforce client programs. In general, users with older client programs are able to use features available from the Perforce server at the client program's release level, but are not able to use the new server features offered by subsequent server upgrades.
Licensing and upgrades
To upgrade your current Perforce server to a newer version, your Perforce license file must be current. Expired licenses do not work with upgraded servers.
Upgrading the server
Read the Release Notes for complete information on server upgrade procedures. In general, Perforce server upgrades require that you:
1.
2.
3.
On UNIX, replace the old version of p4d with the new version downloaded from the Perforce website. On Windows, use the Perforce installer (perforce.exe); the installer automatically replaces the server executable.
4.
Some upgrades (installations with more than 1000 changelists, or upgrades with significant database changes) may require that you manually upgrade the database by running:
p4d -r server_root -J journal_file -xu
This command may take considerable time to complete. You must have sufficient disk space to complete the upgrade.
5.
If you have any questions or difficulties during an upgrade, contact Perforce technical support.
Installation and administration tips
Release and license information
Perforce servers are licensed according to how many users they support.
Licensing information is contained in a file called license in the server root directory. The license file is a plain text file supplied by Perforce Software. Without the license file, the Perforce server limits itself to two users and five client workspaces.
You can update an existing file without stopping the Perforce Server by using the p4 license command. See Adding new licensed users for details.
To view current licensing information, invoke p4d -V from the server root directory where the license file resides, or by specifying the server root directory either on the command line (p4d -V -r server_root) or in the P4ROOT environment variable.
If the server is running, you can also use p4 info to view your licensing information.
The server version is also displayed when you invoke p4d -V or p4 -V.
Observe proper backup procedures
Regular backups of your Perforce data are vital. The key concepts are:
Use p4 verify regularly.
See Supporting Perforce: Backup and Recovery for a full discussion of backup and restoration procedures.
Use separate physical drives for server root and journal
Whether installing on UNIX or Windows, it is advisable to have your P4ROOT directory (that is, the directory containing your database and versioned files) on a different physical drive than your journal file.
By storing the journal on a separate drive, you can be reasonably certain that, if a disk failure corrupts the drive containing P4ROOT, such a failure will not affect your journal file. You can then use the journal file to restore any lost or damaged metadata.
Further details are available in Supporting Perforce: Backup and Recovery.
Use protections and passwords
Until you define a Perforce superuser, every Perforce user is a Perforce superuser and can run any Perforce command on any file. After you start a new Perforce server, use:
p4 protect
as soon as possible to define a Perforce superuser. To learn more about how p4 protect works, see Administering Perforce: Protections.
Without passwords, any user is able to impersonate any other Perforce user, either with the -u flag or by setting P4USER to an existing Perforce user name. Use of Perforce passwords prevents such impersonation. See the P4 User's Guide for details.
To set (or reset) a user's password, either use p4 passwd username (as a Perforce superuser), and enter the new password for the user, or invoke p4 user -f username (also while as a Perforce superuser) and enter the new password into the user specification form. The former command is supported in release 99.1 or later; the latter command is supported under all releases from 97.3 onwards.
The security-conscious Perforce superuser also uses p4 protect to ensure that no access higher than list is granted to nonprivileged users, and to ensure that each user has a Perforce password.
Allocate sufficient disk space for anticipated growth
Because the collection of versioned files grows over time, a good guideline is to allocate sufficient space in your P4ROOT directory to hold three times the size of your users' present collection of versioned files, plus an additional 0.5KB per user per file to hold the database files that store the list of depot files, file status, and file revision histories.
For a more detailed example of a disk sizing estimate, see Disk space allocation.
Managing disk space after installation
All of Perforce's versioned files reside in subdirectories beneath the server root, as do the database files, and (by default) the checkpoints and journals. If you are running low on disk space, consider the following approaches to limit disk space usage:
Configure Perforce to store the journal file on a separate physical disk. Use the P4JOURNAL environment variable or p4d -J to specify the location of the journal file.
Compress checkpoints, or use the -z option to tell p4d to compress checkpoints on the fly.
Use the -jc prefix option with the p4d command to write the checkpoint to a different disk. Alternately, use the default checkpoint files, but back up your checkpoints to a different drive and then delete the copied checkpoints from the root directory. Moving checkpoints to separate drives is good practice not only in terms of diskspace, but also because old checkpoints are needed when recovering from a hardware failure, and if your checkpoint and journal files reside on the same disk as your depot, a hardware failure could leave you without the ability to restore your database.
On UNIX systems, you can relocate some or all of the depot directories to other disks by using symbolic links. If you use symbolic links to shift depot files to other volumes, create the links only after you stop the Perforce server.
If your installation's database files have grown to more than 10 times the size of a checkpoint, you might be able to reduce the size of the files by re-creating them from a checkpoint. See Checkpoints for database tree rebalancing.
Use the p4 sizes command to monitor the amount of disk space currently consumed by your entire installation, or by selected portions of your installation. See Monitoring disk space usage.
Large filesystem support
Early versions of the Perforce server, as well as some operating systems, limit Perforce database files (the db.* files in the P4ROOT directory that hold your site's metadata) to 2 GB in size. The db.have file holds the list of files currently synced to client workspaces, and tends to grow the most quickly.
If you anticipate any of your Perforce database files growing beyond the 2 GB level, install the Perforce server on a platform with support for large files. The following combinations of operating system and Perforce server revision support database files larger than 2 GB:
Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
All versions,
SP6 recommended for NT
FreeBSD
HP-UX 11.11 and higher
98.2/7488 compiled for 2.6 or higher
Tru64 UNIX
(a.k.a. Digital UNIX, OSF/1)
Only with the SGI-supplied xfs upgrade
xfs OS upgrade required
UNIX and NFS support
To maximize performance, configure the server root (P4ROOT) to reside on a local disk and not an NFS-mounted volume. The Perforce Server's file-locking semantics work with NFS mounts on Solaris 2.5.1 and later; some issues still remain regarding file locking on noncommercial implementations of NFS (for instance, Linux and FreeBSD).
These issues affect only the Perforce Server process (p4d). Perforce client programs (such as p4, the Perforce Command-Line Client) have always been able to work with client workspaces on NFS-mounted drives, such as client workspaces located in users' home directories.
Windows: Username and password required for network drives
By default, the Perforce service runs under the Windows local System account. Because Windows requires a real account name and password to access files on a network drive, if Perforce is installed as a service under Windows with P4ROOT pointing to a network drive, the installer requires an account name and a password. The Perforce service is then configured with the supplied data and run as the specified user instead of System. (The account running the service must have Administrator privileges on the machine.)
Although Perforce operates reliably with its root directory on a network drive, it does so only at a substantial performance penalty, because all writes to the database are performed over the network. For optimal performance, install the Windows service to use local drives rather than networked drives.
For more information, see Installing the Perforce service on a network drive.
UNIX: Run p4d as a nonprivileged user
The Perforce server process does not require privileged access. For security reasons, do not run p4d as root or otherwise grant the owner of the p4d process root-level privileges.
Create a nonprivileged UNIX user (for example, perforce) to manage p4d and (optionally) a UNIX group for it (for example, p4admin). Use the umask(1) command to ensure that the server root (P4ROOT) and all files and directories created beneath it are writable only by the UNIX user perforce, and (optionally) readable by members of the UNIX group p4admin.
Under this configuration, the Perforce server (p4d), running as UNIX user perforce, can write to files in the server root, but no users are able to read or overwrite its files. To grant access to the files created by p4d (that is, the depot files, checkpoints, journals, and so on) to trusted users, you can add the trusted users to the UNIX group p4admin.
On Windows, directory permissions are set securely by default; when Perforce runs as a server, the server root is accessible only to the user who invoked the server from the command prompt. When Perforce is installed as a service, the files are owned by the LocalSystem account, and are accessible only to those with Administrator access.
Logging errors
Use the -L flag to p4d or the environment variable P4LOG to specify the Perforce server's error output file. If no error output file is defined, errors are dumped to the p4d process' standard error. Although p4d tries to ensure that all error messages reach the user, if an error occurs and the client program disconnects before the error is received, p4d also logs these errors to its error output.
The Perforce server also supports trace flags used for debugging. See Perforce server trace and tracking flags for details.
Logging file access
If your site requires that user access to files be tracked, use the -A flag to p4d or the environment variable P4AUDIT to activate auditing and specify the Perforce server's audit log file. When auditing is active, every time a user accesses a file, a record is stored in the audit log file. This option can consume considerable disk space on an active server.
See Auditing user file access for details.
Case sensitivity issues
Whether your Perforce Server is running on Windows or UNIX, if your site is involved in cross-platform development (that is, if you are using Perforce client programs on both Windows and UNIX workstations), your users must be aware of certain details regarding case sensitivity issues.
See Case sensitivity and multiplatform development for details.
Enable server process monitoring
The Perforce Server tracks information about Perforce-related processes running on your Perforce server machine. Server process monitoring requires minimal system resources, but you must enable process monitoring for p4 monitor to work. To enable process monitoring, set the monitor counter as follows:
p4 counter -f monitor 1
After you set or change the monitor counter, you must stop and restart the Perforce server for your change to take effect.
See Monitoring server activity for details.
Tune for performance
Perforce is an efficient consumer of network bandwidth and CPU power. The most important variables that determine server performance are the efficiency of your server's disk I/O subsystem and the number of files referenced in any given user-originated Perforce operation.
For more detailed performance tuning information, see Tuning Perforce for Performance.


Previous Table of Contents Index Next

Perforce 2009.2: System Administrator's Guide
Copyright 1997-2009 Perforce Software.