NetApp Package Manager (NPM) ZAPI handlers provide support for remote management of Filer software.

Since the NPM ZAPI (NZ) operations software-async-transfer-package and software-async-update take longer than usual to complete, they are performed asynchronously. With an asynchronous operation, the first non-blocking call initiates the operation, and returns with a job ID. When the operation completes, the status is available, with the job ID, for retrieval. The call software-async-status is used to retrieve status of asynchronous jobs, while software-async-cancel is used to stop asynchronous jobs that have been started.

Only one invocation of an asynchronous operation can be pending at any time. When the operation is running, all other invocations of the same operation are blocked with the error code of EAGAIN indicating this.

When making a new call, EBUSY is returned when the operation cannot be started because of pending operations.

When a previously started asynchronous operation completes, status is available until another asynchronous operation is started.

There are no restrictions on the invocation of synchronous operations: they can be invoked multiple number of times simultaneously, and can run in parallel with other operations. The only exception is software-extract-metadata: only one can run at a time; all other calls are blocked until the operation completes.

Every NPM software package contains metadata, a collection of information, that describes the package. This is used by NPM software on the Filer to validate a software upgrade.

metadata

list of meta elements in name-value pairs

meta element

each name-value pair

meta item

entity represented by a meta element

meta name

name of meta element in string form

meta value

one or more values of a single meta item in string form;
when multiple values are present in the same meta item, all values are present in the same string, with each value unambiguously separated from the other by a single punctuation mark.