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The dcelocal Subtree

To initially boot a server and configure the cell, the appropriate files for mandatory servers (CDS and Security) need to be available on that server machine (in the dcelocal subtree). It is strongly recommended that copies of the minimum set of programs and data files that were installed during the default DCE installation procedure be kept locally on server machines for standalone operation and emergency maintenance.

The contents of the dcelocal subtree can vary from machine to machine inside a DCE cell to accommodate and serve specific configurations. In addition, every machine must have local access to certain files so that each machine can run as a standalone system if the machine is disconnected or partitioned from the cell. The appropriate files on DCE servers that have to be local to the server machine must be stored under dcelocal. Client-related data files are stored under dcelocal/etc (static configuration data) and dcelocal/var/adm (log files and so forth). All server-specific data files are located in the dcelocal/var/dce-component-name directory.

The default pathname for dcelocal is set to /opt/dcelocal during the configuration process. This is a fixed pathname. Every machine must have local access to the files that are necessary to configure it, up to activating DFS access in the cell. The /opt/dcelocal/dce_cf.db file is the DCE configuration file containing the name of the host to be configured and the cell name. A machine must access this small set of DCE files, which is kept on the machine's local disk, to start up the various DCE components and for local configuration information and log information.

Because DCE configuration takes place after mounting the local file systems, none of these files has to be available in the root partition. During DCE configuration, only the executables in dcelocal/bin are reliably available. Start-up procedures, such as rc scripts, need to address executables through dcelocal/bin rather than /usr/bin, even if the same files are believed to be in both directories. Commands in /usr/bin can be just symbolic links to dcelocal.

The dcelocal subtree is populated and initialized during DCE configuration.