Home
Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Installing on Linux systems
After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
Managing the BigFix Services
You can start, stop, restart, or query the status of Linux BigFix services using the following commands:

Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
- Introduction
  BigFix aims to solve the increasingly complex problem of keeping your critical systems updated, compatible, and free of security issues. It uses patented Fixlet technology to identify vulnerable computers in your enterprise. With just a few mouse-clicks you can remediate them across your entire network from a central console.
- BigFix Platform Unicode Support Overview
  BigFix Platform V9.5 gathers data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages, encode the data into UTF-8 format, and report it back to the BigFix server.
- Sample deployment scenarios
  The following deployment scenarios illustrate some basic configurations taken from actual case studies. Your organization might look similar to one of the examples below, depending on the size of your network, the various bandwidth restrictions between clusters and the number of relays and servers. The main constraint is not CPU power, but bandwidth.
- Requirements and assumptions
  BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
- Types of installation
  Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
- Managing licenses
  You must obtain a license key before you can install and use BigFix.
- Before installing
  Before running the installation make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Installing on Windows systems
  Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing on Linux systems
  After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
  - Installing and configuring DB2
    Depending on which version of DB2 you want to install, you install DB2 either before installing the BigFix server or at the same time:
  - Downloading BigFix
    Download BigFix from HCL License & Delivery Portal (Flexnet).
  - Performing an evaluation installation on Linux
    To install a BigFix server with an evaluation license on Linux, perform the following steps:
  - Installation Command Options
    You can run the Production or Evaluation installation in interactive or silent mode.
  - Installing the components
  - Installation Folder Structure
    After the BigFix installation, you can see the following folder structure:
  - Configuration, Masthead, and Log Files
    At the end of the installation you can find the following BigFix files containing the settings of the installed components and the installation messages:
  - Managing the BigFix Services
    You can start, stop, restart, or query the status of Linux BigFix services using the following commands:
  - Changing the database password
    After you install the database of the BigFix server, you can change its password by running the following command:
  - Changing the DB2 port
  - Removing the Product Components on Linux systems
    You can have one or more BigFix components installed on a local system and you can decide to remove one or all of them at the same time.
  - DSA on Linux
- Installing the clients
  Install the BigFix client on every computer in your network that you want to administer, including the computer that is running the console.
- BigFix Administration Tool
  The BigFix Administration Tool, also called BESAdmin, is the tool we use to perform configuration changes and maintenance operations.
- Post-installation configuration steps
  After having run the installation, make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Managing relays
  Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
- Introduction to Tiny Core Linux - BigFix Virtual Relay
  Follow the step-by-step sequence of operations needed to build the virtual machine, from the downloading of the ISO image to the complete setup and configuration of the BigFix Virtual Relay.
- Setting up a proxy connection
  If your enterprise uses a proxy to access the Internet, your BigFix environment can use that communication path to gather content from sites.
- Running backup and restore
  You can schedule periodic backups (typically nightly) of the BigFix server and database files, to reduce the risk of losing productivity or data when a problem occurs by restoring the latest backup.
- Upgrading on Windows systems
- Upgrading on Linux systems
- Known limitations and workarounds
  This section describes the known limitations and possible workarounds.
- Logging
  This section describes the log files associated with the BigFix components.
- Uninstalling the BigFix client

Managing the BigFix Services

You can start, stop, restart, or query the status of Linux BigFix services using the following commands:

service service stop
service service start
service service restart
service service status

/etc/init.d/service stop
/etc/init.d/service start
/etc/init.d/service restart
/etc/init.d/service status

where service is one of the following services:

besclient
besfilldb
besgatherdb
besserver
beswebreports

Note: Ensure you do not use the systemctl command to manage a service.

If you installed the BES Server Plugin Service (MFS), use these commands to start and stop it:

service mfs start
service mfs stop