Combining SYSUAF files

[Tony Marron]

We are in the process of migration to a new Alphaserver and have set up all of the required supporting products on the new system - TCP etc. Entries now exist in the SYSUAF for all of these products. I now want to copy my old UAF file to the new system but do not want to overwite the new file. Any suggestions on merging these files?

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

Just do a multy-file convert with exception file. Roughly:

$convert/stat/excep=dups/sort uaf,old new

Remember to also do rightslist and vmsmail$profile, maybe even password_history.

Take the opportunity to optimze uaf & rightslist.
All to often they are neglected for decades!

The system documentation has details on converting and optimizing sysuaf

hth,
Hein.

[Uwe Zessin]

In the past, I simply used a text editor to extract the records I needed from one file and used CONVERT to merge the (indexed) SYSUAF with the (sequential) file containing the extracted records.

There might also be records in more files like RIGHTSLIST.DAT, NET($)PROXY.DAT. RIGHTSLIST is more of a challenge, because it is permanently kept open, but there are ways to work around it.

[Ian Miller.]

SYSUAF is a index file and you can use merge as described.
See
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/731FINAL/4477/4477pro_023.html#build_uaf_upgrade

[Uwe Zessin]

I know, but I did not want to do a blind merge, but ONLY copy a subset of users.

[Ian Miller.]

I have previously written DCL to open the two SYSUAF files and copy selected records from one to the other. This works when wanting to just copy a few.

[Uwe Zessin]

Ah, interesting. A german proverb says: there is more than one way to Rome ;-)

But DCL is still useful :-)
I've used it to feed a sequential file of RIGHTSLIST records into an active RIGHTSLIST.DAT.

[Jan van den Ende]

Tony,

the REAL challenge is in also merging RIGHTSLIST.DAT, especially if
a. duplicate usernames do NOT have identical UICs, and/or
b. numeric identifiers are created the DEFAULT way, ie, WITHOUT specifying the /VALU= --- sure to generate conflicting values if done multiple times.

If so, it might be better to NOT merge the RIGHTLIST.DATs, but, after merging the SYSUAFs, do a
$ MCR AUTHORIZE add/ident/user=*

This scans the SYSUAF for usernames and adds the corresponding identifier values.

Then add numeric identifiers by
$ MRC ADD/IDENT /VALU=IN= see authorize HELP for allowed values.

If you already have a lot of identifiers in your existing RIGHTSLIST, you can start this procedure also with that one.

Oh yeah,

...and have set up all of the required supporting products on the new system - TCP etc.

You might wish to start be verifying that you dd not already introduce conflicting values. Repairing NOW is a lot easier than later on!

hth

Proost.

Have one on me (maybe at the Bootcamp in Nashua?)

jpe

[Jan van den Ende]

Tony,

sorry, I should have started with

WELCOME to the VMS Forum!

Proost.

Have one on me (maybe at the Bootcamp in Nashua?)

jpe

[Tony Marron]

Thanks for all the responses - It sounds a little tricky so I'll give it a try on a test file first.