Initializing the z/OS system

After you install the Zowe runtime, you must initialize Zowe with proper security configurations, certificates, and so on before you can start it. To do this, you run the zwe init command. This step is common for installing and configuring Zowe from either a convenience build or from an SMP/E build.

About the zwe init command

The zwe init command is a combination of the following sub-commands. Each sub-command defines a configuration.

• mvs: Copy the data sets provided with Zowe to custom data sets.
• security: Create the user IDs and security manager settings.
• apfauth: APF authorize the LOADLIB containing the modules that need to perform z/OS priviledged security calls.
• certificate: Configure Zowe to use TLS certificates.
• vsam: Configure the VSAM files needed to run the Zowe caching service used for high availability (HA)
• stc: Configure the system to launch the Zowe started task.

You can type zwe init --help to learn more about the command or see the zwe init command reference for detailed explanation, examples, and parameters.

zwe init command requires a Zowe configuration file to proceed. This configuration file instructs how Zowe should be initialized. Please create and review this file before proceeding.

Procedure

To initialize the z/OS system and permissions that Zowe requires, run the following command.

zwe init --config /path/to/zowe.yaml

Next steps

The zwe init command runs the sub-commands in sequence automatically. If you have successfully ran the above command, you can move on to start Zowe.

You can choose to run the sub-commands one by one to define each step based on your need, or if you encounter some failures with zwe init command, you can pick up the failed sub-commands step specifically and re-run it.

1. Prepare custom MVS data sets. Copy the data sets provided with Zowe to custom data sets.

2. Initialize Zowe security configurations. Create the user IDs and security manager settings.

   If Zowe has already been launched on a z/OS system from a previous release of Zowe v2 you can skip this security configuration step unless told otherwise in the release documentation.

3. APF authorize load libraries containing the modules that need to perform z/OS privileged security calls..

4. Configure Zowe to use TLS certificates.

5. (Required only if you are configuring Zowe for cross LPAR sysplex high availability): Create the VSAM data sets used by the Zowe API Mediation Layer caching service.

6. Install Zowe main started tassks.

To learn how to run the zwe init command step by step, type zwe init <sub-command> --help. For example, zwe init stc --help.