I'm being tasked at work to get two dedicated servers on RHEL 5.5 (IBM doesn't support RHEL 6) for Clearcase and Clearquest. We're doing a 7.1.2 install on the Linux servers but my problem is that the developers are performing the installation them selves on the servers and they're telling me that the software requires a GUI to perform the install which I feel is a complete waste for my servers. I can't believe that any production server of this nature running in an enterprise environment would require a server to have X, Gnome, & Firefox installed.

Anyone here ever have any experience with Clearcase / Clearquest 7.1.2 on Linux?

I call BS. Everything I've read/seen about Clearcase says the installation takes place via CLI. Now the application itself seems to need a web browser to run, but you don't need it on the server, anymore than you need Firefox on a dedicated web server, alongside Apache.

Now, there may be a GUI based installer that is easier to use...but from the docs I've seen on IBM's website, none of them mention X.

How would one use the GUI based installer without having X installed on the server? I have a extremely minimal install of RHEL 5.5 x86_64 so there's no applications pertaining to 'X' at all. How can one utilize the GUI installer in this scenario of that's what the developers request to do?

In my experience when software developers do installations they will lie about the requirements just to make their life easier.

Having said that I will also say that it will do no harm to have X installed on your server. You can boot the server into runlevel 3 so that X isn't running locally. People can ssh to the machine and run GUI software or they can log on to the console and run 'startx' manually. Naturally you will also need a window manager.

Hi -

I agree with the above two posts:
a) your developers and/or the so-called "requirements" are probably full of crap: you can probably work from a command line without problem
b) there's not necessarily any HARM in installing X (and then returning happy to runlevel 3 once you no longer need a GUI)

... BUT ...

Why don't you just call the ClearCase / ClearQuest support lines and ask them?

I absolutely don't want to install X and or a Window Manager. All my RHEL 4 servers have identical packages (give or take 15) but they're all CLI only and I don't want to have to deal with supporting stuff that belongs on a workstation or desktop for their sake.

This is less of a technical issue and more of an office politics issue. Pick your battles carefully.

Words of wisdom.

You don't need to use the GUI for the install. There is a perfectly good CLI for it. And the posts about developers above are just rhetoric. From a developers point of view, the same can be said about sys admins - and I am both.