Prerequisites for Running dsmig

In this section, old instance refers to the 5.1 or 5.2 instance and new instance refers to the Directory Server 6.2 instance.

Before you use dsmig to migrate an instance, ensure that the following tasks have been performed:

• The Directory Server 6.2 packages (either zip, or native packages) have been installed.

  The Directory Server 6.2 packages can be installed on the same machine that holds the Directory Server 5.1 instance, or on a different machine.

• The old instance must have been stopped correctly.

  A disorderly shutdown of the old instance will cause problems during the migration. Even if the old and new instance are on different machines, the old instance must be stopped before the migration is started.

• dsmig has access to the old instance files.

• If the old and new instances are on different machines, a complete image of the old instance must be created on the machine that hosts the new instance.

  The complete image includes all the files required for migration of the instance (schema, configuration, security and database files). The complete image files must be located in the same directories as they were under the original Server Root. You can run cp -r to achieve this, provided none of the files have been relocated outside the Server Root.

You can create and start the new instance manually, but is not mandatory to create the new instance before running dsmig. dsmig checks whether a new Directory Server instance exists in the specified path. If a new instance exists, the commands are carried out on this instance. If a new instance does exist, the instance is created automatically.

The new instance can be created anywhere except for the exact location of the old instance.

While creating a new instance, a DN and a password for the directory manager is stored in nsslapd-rootdn and nssalpd-rootpw attributes under cn=config. During the migration process, the values for these attributes from the 5.1 or 5.2 instance are not propagated as these attributes already hold a value for the new instance. The same behavior is applied to nsslapd-secureport and nsslapd-port attributes for the same reason.