System Administration
How to change/revise/delete things in the system.
Caution
Depending on how you are using the MVS-TK5 system, you may be running it on a local installation or may be running it on a remote installation.
Once you are familiar with the system, you will probably run it in daemon_mode most of the time.
If you installed MVS-TK5 per the instructions for a remote server installation, the System will be running in daemon_mode.
A lot of the tasks done by the System Administrator will need to use the Hercules/MVS console which is not available in daemon_mode.
I have no doubt that there are real System Administrators and/or System Programmers who will read through this tutorial and think, “What… Why do you keep shutting down and re-IPLing the system?”
My goal is to get a System running in a “state more similar” to a “real world system” for an “Application Programmer” without learning all the things that System Administrators know about updating the system while it is still running.
In most situations, there is only one person using this system so it is quicker/easier/less to learn to get to the final result.
An “Application Programmer” doesn’t need access to the Hercules/MVS console.
They just use a 3270 Terminal or one of the newer methods of creating and running programs (VSCode + Zowe, use ncat or rje80 or IND$FILE, etc.) to access the System.
Once all the tasks are done, running the System in daemon_mode will be the norm.
So, this presents a problem.
To perform these tasks:
-
Read the entire task to see if:
- The console is not required and/or
- changes need to/can be made while the System is running.
If so,
- Need to login to MVS-TK5 as HERC01 as this userid has permissions to do anything.
- Make the changes.
Else:
- Shutdown the MVS-TK5 system.
- Run the set_console_mode script.
- Make any changes that need to/can be made while the system is not running.
- Manually IPL the system.
- Need to login to MVS-TK5 as HERC01 as this userid has permissions to do anything.
Also remember: When done updating and changing things:
-
Shutdown the MVS-TK5 system.
-
Run the set_daemon_mode script.
-
IPL the system by:
If remote: re-booting the RPi so the systemctl mvs.service starts up the MVS-TK5 system.
If local: run the mvs startup script.
Note
To make the tutorials more “generic”, the instructions will use the term “«mvs-home»” to refer to the base of the mvs-tk5 system.
For the remote installation, as root, that would be “/mvs-tk5/”
For a local installation, it will be where you extracted the zip file.
i.e.
- “~/Turnkey/mvs-tk5-v5/” or
- “~/mvs-tk5”
Make sure you replace “«mvs-home»” with the correct location before running the commands.
To make the MVS-TK5 System a little bit closer to a “real world” environment for an “Application Programmer”:
The Application Programmer User Id will be “DSCOBOL”.
Tasks
- Update the host environment and the MVS-TK5 System
- Create a DASD device just for that Programmer (why? why not!)
- Add a new USER
- Create a starting structure of PDS’s for the Programmer
- Create some base JCL to:
- compile COBOL programs
- run programs
- do some basic functions