Introduction to SAT

About System Admin Toolkit (SAT)

The System Admin Toolkit (SAT) is designed to assist administrators with common tasks, such as troubleshooting and querying information about the HPE Cray EX System and its components, system boot and shutdown, and replacing hardware components.

SAT offers a command line utility which uses subcommands. There are similarities between SAT commands and xt commands used on the Cray XC platform. For more information on SAT commands, see SAT Command Overview.

In CSM 1.3 and newer, the sat command is automatically available on all the Kubernetes control plane. For more information, see SAT in CSM. Older versions of CSM do not have the sat command automatically available, and SAT must be installed as a separate product.

SAT Command Overview

Describes the SAT Command Line Utility, lists the key commands found in the System Admin Toolkit man pages, and provides instruction on the SAT Container Environment.

SAT Command Line Utility

The primary component of the System Admin Toolkit (SAT) is a command-line utility run from Kubernetes control plane nodes (ncn-m nodes).

It is designed to assist administrators with common tasks, such as troubleshooting and querying information about the HPE Cray EX System and its components, system boot and shutdown, and replacing hardware components. There are similarities between SAT commands and xt commands used on the Cray XC platform.

SAT Commands

The top-level SAT man page describes the toolkit, documents the global options affecting all subcommands, documents configuration file options, and references the man page for each subcommand. SAT consists of many subcommands that each have their own set of options.

SAT Container Environment

The sat command-line utility runs in a container using Podman, a daemonless container runtime. SAT runs on Kubernetes control plane nodes. A few important points about the SAT container environment include the following:

  • Using either sat or sat bash always launches a container.
  • The SAT container does not have access to the NCN file system.

There are two ways to run sat.

  • Interactive: Launching a container using sat bash, followed by a sat command.
  • Non-interactive: Running a sat command directly on a Kubernetes control plane node.

In both of these cases, a container is launched in the background to execute the command. The first option, running sat bash first, gives an interactive shell, at which point sat commands can be run. In the second option, the container is launched, executes the command, and upon the command’s completion the container exits. The following two examples show the same action, checking the system status, using both modes.

(ncn-m001#) Here is an example using interactive mode:

sat bash

((CONTAINER_ID) sat-container#) Example sat command after a container is launched:

sat status

(ncn-m001#) Here is an example using non-interactive mode:

sat status

Interactive Advantages

Running sat using the interactive command prompt gives the ability to read and write local files on ephemeral container storage. If multiple sat commands are being run in succession, use sat bash to launch the container beforehand. This will save time because the container does not need to be launched for each sat command.

Non-interactive Advantages

The non-interactive mode is useful if calling sat with a script, or when running a single sat command as a part of several steps that need to be executed from a management NCN.

Man Pages - Interactive and Non-interactive Modes

To view a sat man page from a Kubernetes control plane node, use sat-man on the manager node.

(ncn-m001#) Here is an example:

sat-man status

A man page describing the SAT container environment is available on the Kubernetes control plane nodes, which can be viewed either with man sat or man sat-podman from the manager node.

(ncn-m001#) Here are examples:

man sat

man sat-podman

Command Prompt Conventions in SAT

The host name in a command prompt indicates where the command must be run. The user account that must run the command is also indicated in the prompt.

  • The root or super-user account always has host name in the prompt and the # character at the end of the prompt.
  • Any non-root account is indicated with account@hostname>. A non-privileged account is referred to as user.
  • The command prompt inside the SAT container environment is indicated with the string as follows. It also has the # character at the end of the prompt.
Command Prompt Meaning
ncn-m001# Run the command as root on the specific Kubernetes control plane server which has this hostname (ncn-m001 in this example). (Non-interactive)
user@hostname> Run the command as any non-root user on the specified hostname. (Non-interactive)
(venv) user@hostname> Run the command as any non-root user within a Python virtual environment on the specified hostname. (Non-interactive)
(CONTAINER_ID) sat-container# Run the command inside the SAT container environment by first running sat bash. (Interactive)

These command prompts should be inserted into text before the fenced code block instead of inside of it. This is a change from the documentation of SAT 2.5 and earlier. Here is an example of the new use of the command prompt:

  1. (ncn-m001#) Example first step.

    yes >/dev/null