Solaris

Hi Everyone,

I'm still learning daily about UNIX (specifically Solaris 10).

I'm tasked with moving my current application and database from Datacenter A to Datacenter B.

There will be no updates and no changes other than a new server and new location.

So far, I have Solaris installed and patched on the target to equal the patch level of the source.

My question is, what are key files or directories I should directly copy (or perhaps rsync) to do this as smooth as possible?

I will probably be frowned upon for this, but it may help explain my question a bit better.

So if this was Windows XP (for example) and I was giving someone a new pc. The OS would be installed and patched. Then the key folders I'd need to be sure to copy would be basically the user profile, favorites, mydocs, etc. I'm looking for a similar answer but in Unix terms.

I know right now the .profiles are not there and that is definatley one thing.

Can anyone maybe give me direction or a handy dandy guide "when moving to a new box...."?

Thanks for your time.

Making analogies to Windows isn't frowned upon, but they don't always work, either... That's only what you'd do to move a user's documents, not a an application, from one windows machine to another. For that sort of thing under UNIX, that's all kept under /home/. It may even be possible to replicate usernames and passwords by careful tweaking of the password and shadow file. (VERY careful. One mistake can lock you out.) Or just by doing it by hand, creating new users with the same names and UID numbers they had before, matching the files transferred over. (User IDs do NOT have to exist to create files with that ID. That's handy, you can create the files first then the users later...)

If someone asked you to copy an application that'd be radically different. Which files need to be copied really depend on what files the application's using. It may have executables under /bin, libraries under /usr/lib, live database inside /var/, configuration in /etc/. Which sounds a bit disorganized but there's a method behind the madness -- these different folders are often on different partitions to allow for easy management of growth.

It could also be one big folder under /opt/. Proprietary applications like to do that since it means they don't have to bother integrating into the system. It really depends on the application and how the administrators wanted it to work.

How was this application installed in the first place? There may be records.

that's a mixed bag. It was installed long ago and had updates done to it over the years.

Taking the application out of the mix, just to ensure the same users can log in with same profiles/permissions. What would I need to copy to make that at least easy?

I know each install is different, but "generally" speaking.

Is the destination box at the image of the source (HW... most important is filesystem layout)? about users config the important files will be in /etc (passwd, shadow, group etc...), if you can easily recopy (why not with rsync...) /export/home the application part will be more tricky what kind of application is it? will you keep the same structure? meaning more : will you reinstall the apps? if so keeping the same structure (filesystem layout) or will you be taking this opportunity to do something better?( you should know what wasnt top in the source server you can correct now...)