On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:20:54 -0500, Mark Zelden wrote:
>
>/etc containes configuration files for z/OS Unix the same way that 
>SYS1.PARMLIB (or the
>concatenation) does for z/OS MVS.   If someone replaced your previous /etc 
>with the one
>that ServerPac delivers "as is", they absolutely did the wrong thing!!   That 
>would be like
>IPLing with IBM.PARMLIB as your only parmlib.     
> 
/etc/magic feels like an exception; perhaps it doesn't belong in /etc,
but where instead?

o It's needed for the proper operation of the file(1) command; perhaps others.

o It's unlikely to be modified by an installation.  (I've thus assured that
  I'll get twenty "We did!" followups.)

>The proper (and documented) way to do this is to merge the ServerPac /etc 
>into your existing /etc (same with /var) to pick up anything new / added 
>without destroying your existing configuration.    Then review migration 
>information
>(including migration checks from the system health checker both before and
>after an upgrade) for any changes you may required or desire to existing
>/etc files the same way you would do for any PARMLIB member.
> 
Does IBM supply the tool to do this as part of the ServerPac?  Is
its operation automated, even to the minimal extent of copying
from /samples any _essential_ members (such as magic) not
otherwise present in /etc?  Did my systems programmer overlook
a highly recommended health checker step?  Would health
checke have reported this defect?

>For PARMLIB, you can concatenate the IBM distributed version so no merge
>is needed and it is a little less work then the merge method you need to 
>do for /etc.   
> 
Indeed.  The UNIX ad-hoc convention of a colon-separated list of
directories is less orderly and less uniformly available than the
OS facility of a concatenation of directories with a search order
intrinsic to the system.

-- gil

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