Migrate /etc and /var system control files

The following elements and features use /etc:

• BCP (Predictive Failure Analysis).
• CIM.
• Communications Server (IP Services component). See IP Services: Update /etc configuration files.
• Cryptographic Services (PKI Services and System SSL components).
• DFSMSrmm.
• Distributed File Service. The SMB server uses /etc/dfs.
• IBM HTTP Server.
• IBM Tivoli Directory Server (TDS). The LDAP server component uses /etc/ldap.
• Infoprint Server. See Remount the Printer Inventory and copy files that were customized.
• Integrated Security Services. The Network Authentication Service component uses /etc/skrb.
• Library Server. See Library Server actions to perform before the first IPL of z/OS V2R2.
• z/OS UNIX.

The following elements and features use /var:

• Cryptographic Services (OCSF component). See OCSF: Migrate the directory structure.
• DFSMSrmm.
• IBM Tivoli Directory Server (TDS). The LDAP server component uses /var/ldap.
• IBM z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF).
• Infoprint Server. See Remount the Printer Inventory and copy files that were customized.
• Integrated Security Services. The Network Authentication Service component uses /var/skrb.

Many z/OS UNIX utilities are available for comparing and copying directory structures and files. Two that are especially helpful for /etc and /var migration work are:

• diff (with the -r option, for recursion). This utility is very useful for comparing the path structures and file contents, and has many options available. The dircmp utility has fewer options for directory comparisons, and the cmp utility stops after the first difference in a file comparison and has output that is more cumbersome.
• pax. The -rw option works like a copy (instead of making or extracting from a single file archive) for directories, symbolic links, and files. Consider the -pe option for saving the attributes when doing the copy. The -k option prevents overwriting of existing files. The –C option causes pax to continue after encountering an error on the source file system. That is, pax prints an error message and returns a nonzero value after the command ends. Errors on the target file system (such as out of space or write errors) still cause the pax command to end as it always has.

To determine what you need to migrate, first compare the ServerPac /etc and /var file systems with your existing /etc and /var file systems. Mount a copy of your existing /etc and /var file systems to a location outside of the ServerPac file system. For instance, you might have your ServerPac file systems at /ServerPac/zOS_Rx/etc and /ServerPac/zOS_Rx/var, and your existing file systems at /Service/ImageX/etc and /Service/ImageX/var. You might have several file systems to mount that are copies of each of your image's /etc and /var file systems (ImageX, ImageY, and ImageZ, for instance). To compare the ServerPac and existing system's /etc and /var, you can run two z/OS UNIX commands, such as:

diff  -r  /ServerPac/zOS_Rx/etc  /Service/ImageX/etc
diff  -r  /ServerPac/zOS_Rx/var  /Service/ImageX/var

These command results will give you a list of the changes that your existing system's /etc and /var file systems are missing—both the structure differences and the file content differences.

After you determine which directories, symbolic links, and files you are missing from your existing system, you can use one of several ways to propagate the ServerPac information forward:

• You could use the pax command (with the -k option) to copy from the ServerPac /etc and /var file systems to each of your existing system's /etc and /var file systems. For example:

  cd /ServerPac/zOS_Rx/etc
  pax -rvwkC -pe * /Service/ImageX/etc

  Another example:

  cd /ServerPac/zOS_Rx/var
  pax -rvwkC -pe * /Service/ImageX/var

  The pax command is a good choice because it copies all files, directories, and symbolic links for each file system from the ServerPac system using a single command without overlaying any existing files.
• You could rerun the product-supplied MKDIR jobs to recreate the directories and symbolic links on each of your existing system's /etc and /var file systems. (A list of the MKDIR jobs is found in z/OS Program Directory and the other program directories for the products that were in your ServerPac order.) MKDIR jobs are designed to be run multiple times without damaging your existing file system. For the files under /var/ocsf, rerun the OCSF-supplied ocsf_install_crypto installation script. Or, you can combine these jobs and script them into a single batch job to make the execution more consolidated and repeatable.