Perforce 2009.2: System Administrator's Guide

Table of Contents

Preface About This Manual

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Chapter 1 Welcome to Perforce: Installing and Upgrading

Getting Perforce

UNIX installation

Downloading the files and making them executable

Creating a Perforce server root directory

Telling Perforce servers which port to listen on

Telling Perforce client programs which port to connect to

Starting the Perforce server

Stopping the Perforce server

Windows installation

Windows services and servers

Starting and stopping Perforce

Upgrading a Perforce server

Using old client programs with a new server

Licensing and upgrades

Upgrading the server

Installation and administration tips

Release and license information

Observe proper backup procedures

Use separate physical drives for server root and journal

Use protections and passwords

Allocate sufficient disk space for anticipated growth

Managing disk space after installation

Large filesystem support

UNIX and NFS support

Windows: Username and password required for network drives

UNIX: Run p4d as a nonprivileged user

Logging errors

Logging file access

Case sensitivity issues

Enable server process monitoring

Tune for performance

Chapter 2 Supporting Perforce: Backup and Recovery

Backup and recovery concepts

Checkpoint files

Journal files

Versioned files

Backup procedures

Recovery procedures

Database corruption, versioned files unaffected

Both database and versioned files lost or damaged

Ensuring system integrity after any restoration

Chapter 3 Administering Perforce: Superuser Tasks

Basic Perforce Administration

Authentication methods: passwords and tickets

Server security levels

Password strength

Resetting user passwords

Creating users

Preventing automatic creation of users

Deleting obsolete users

Adding new licensed users

Reverting files left open by obsolete users

Reclaiming disk space by obliterating files

Deleting changelists and editing changelist descriptions

Verifying files by signature

Defining filetypes with p4 typemap

Implementing sitewide pessimistic locking with p4 typemap

Forcing operations with the -f flag

Advanced Perforce administration

Running Perforce through a firewall

Specifying IP addresses in P4PORT

Running from inetd on UNIX

Case sensitivity and multiplatform development

Monitoring server activity

Perforce server trace and tracking flags

Auditing user file access

Moving a Perforce server to a new machine

Moving between machines of the same architecture

Moving between different architectures that use the same text format

Moving between Windows and UNIX

Changing the IP address of your server

Changing the hostname of your server

Using multiple depots

Naming depots

Defining new local depots

Enabling versioned specifications with the spec depot

Listing depots

Deleting depots

Remote depots and distributed development

When to use remote depots

How remote depots work

Using remote depots for code drops

Managing Unicode Installations

Overview

Configuring the Perforce Server

Configuring Client Machines

Chapter 4 Administering Perforce: Protections

When should protections be set?

Setting protections with p4 protect

The permission lines' five fields

Access levels

Which users should receive which permissions?

Default protections

Interpreting multiple permission lines

Exclusionary protections

Which lines apply to which users or files?

Granting access to groups of users

Creating and editing groups

Groups and protections

Deleting groups

How protections are implemented

Access Levels Required by Perforce Commands

Chapter 5 Customizing Perforce: Job Specifications

The default Perforce job template

The job template's fields

The Fields: field

The Values: fields

The Presets: field

The Comments: field

Caveats, warnings, and recommendations

Example: a custom template

Working with third-party defect tracking systems

P4DTG, The Perforce Defect Tracking Gateway

P4DTI, Perforce Defect Tracking Integration

Building your own integration

Chapter 6 Scripting Perforce: Triggers and Daemons

Triggers

The trigger table

Triggering on changelists

Triggering on fixes

Triggering on forms

Using triggers for external authentication

Archive triggers for external data sources

Using multiple triggers

Writing triggers to support multiple Perforce servers

Triggers and security

Triggers and Windows

Daemons

Perforce's change review daemon

Creating other daemons

Commands used by daemons

Daemons and counters

Chapter 7 Tuning Perforce for Performance

Tuning for performance

Memory

Filesystem performance

Disk space allocation

Monitoring disk space usage

Network

CPU

Diagnosing slow response times

Hostname vs. IP address

Windows wildcards

DNS lookups and the hosts file

Location of the p4 executable

Preventing server swamp

Using tight views

Assigning protections

Limiting database queries

Scripting efficiently

Using compression efficiently

Checkpoints for database tree rebalancing

Chapter 8 Perforce and Windows

Using the Perforce installer

Upgrade notes

Scripted deployment and unattended installation

Windows services vs. Windows servers

Starting and stopping the Perforce service

Starting and stopping the Perforce server

Installing the Perforce service on a network drive

Multiple Perforce services under Windows

Windows configuration parameter precedence

Resolving Windows-related instabilities

Users having trouble with P4EDITOR or P4DIFF

Chapter 9 Perforce Proxy

System requirements

Installing P4P

UNIX

Windows

Running P4P

Running P4P as a Windows service

P4P flags

Administering P4P

No backups required

Stopping P4P

Managing disk space consumption

Determining if your Perforce client is using the proxy

P4P and protections

Determining if specific files are being delivered from the proxy

Maximizing performance improvement

Reducing server CPU usage by disabling file compression

Network topologies versus P4P

Preloading the cache directory for optimal initial performance

Distributing disk space consumption

Chapter 10 Perforce Replication

What is Replication?

Why Replicate?

How does replication work?

System requirements

Warnings

Limits and restrictions

Replication commands

p4 replicate flags

p4 replicate commands

Replication Examples

Offloading Reporting and Checkpointing Tasks

Using replica servers

Configuring for Continuous Builds

Providing a Warm Standby Server

Next Steps

Appendix A Perforce Server (p4d) Reference

Synopsis

Syntax

Description

Exit Status

Options

Usage Notes

Related Commands

Index