How to install Symantec Backup Exec Agent on CentOS/RHEL 7 Minimal
posted | about 2 minutes to read
tags: symantec backupexec system administration
Recently, I was helping evaluate new long-term backup options to replace Microsoft’s DPM due to their lack of support for Linux, and one of the options that we were looking at was Symantec Backup Exec 2014. Unfortunately, if you look at their software compatibility list, you’ll notice that they do support Red Hat 7, but with a very important caveat – you can’t install as minimal. This was kind of a problem for us, since we had built all of our servers using a minimal image, and I wasn’t about to rebuild twenty-plus servers just for a backup solution.
Fortunately, the fix was pretty easy. After installing a base non-minimal image, we compared the list of packages, and found some differences. After testing a couple of packages, we found that the one that mattered to the Backup Exec agent installer was the net-tools package, which contains the ifconfig command that the agent installer needs.
After installing this via yum, you’ll be able to run the Backup Exec installer. However, the SymSnap driver install will still fail. I wasn’t able to figure out a way to solve this, since it failed on both the full install and the minimal install, so if anyone has some guidance for that part of the installation I’d love to hear your solutions!