Contents of the /etc directory

The /etc directory contents

The root directory contains an /etc directory, which stores storage system configuration files, executables required to boot the system, and some log files.

Attention
Do not delete any directories from the /etc directory unless instructed to do so by technical support personnel.

About the configuration files

Some of the configuration files in the /etc directory can be edited to affect the behavior of the storage system. If a configuration file can be edited by the system administrator, it is described in Section 5 of the man pages for your storage system. To edit a configuration file, use an editor on your administration host.

For more information about the /etc/rc file, see Configuring storage system startup. For more information about the quotas file, see the chapter on quotas in the Storage Administration Guide. For more information about other editable configuration files, see the man pages.

About /etc/messages

By default, all system messages of level INFO and higher are sent to the console and to the /etc/messages file. This way, you can see a record of events on your storage system, as well as use scripts to parse for particular events if needed.

The /etc/messages file is rotated once a week, and six weeks of messages are retained.

You can use the logger command to create and send a system message explicitly. For more information about the logger command, see the na_logger(1) man page.

If you would like to change the level of messages that are sent to /etc/messages, you can edit /etc/syslog.conf. For more information about message levels and the /etc/syslog.conf file, see the na_syslog.conf(5) man file.

Character coding of /etc/usermap.cfg and /etc/quotas

The /etc/usermap.cfg and /etc/quotas files support two types of encoding: Unicode and root volume UNIX encoding. As a result, you can edit the files from either a PC or a UNIX workstation. Data ONTAP can detect whether a file was edited and saved by a Unicode-capable editor, such as Notepad. If so, Data ONTAP considers all entries in the file to be in Unicode. Otherwise, Data ONTAP considers the entries to be in the root volume UNIX encoding. Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) entities are allowed only in the root volume UNIX encoding.