How to clone a WebSphere 8 profile

Question

I would like to clone an existing profile, start the server and modify it via the Admin Console.

I already read the IBM documentation about

 manageprofiles.bat

but the manageprofiles tool does not contain something like:

 # would be nice if a clone action exists
 manageprofiles.bat -clone -profileName base -targetProfileName base1

This is what I need and I don't see a way to achieve this. The tool can create, delete, backup and restore a profile.

What I already tried

1. Copied the profile directory and renamed it
2. Edited the paths in the bin/setupCmdLine.bat
3. Added the profile to the AppServer/properties/profileRegistry.xml
4. Executed manageprofiles -validateAndUpdateRegistry

But the profile is still not recognized by WAS. I can verify this by executing

manageprofiles -listProfiles

How do you clone or copy profiles?

Is there a manual way?

If so, which files in the profile's dir must be edited?

Answer 1

Solved

Here are the manual steps that I did to clone an existent profile.

1. Make shure that the server is shutdown.
2. Copy the existent profile from Profiles/<oldProfile> to Profiles/<newProfile>
3. Update Path WAS_USER_SCRIPT in Profiles\<newProfile>\bin\setupCmdLine.bat
4. Update Path USER_INSTALL_ROOT in Profiles\<newProfile>\bin\setupCmdLine.bat
5. Update property user.root in Profiles\<newProfile>\properties\ssl.client.props
6. Replace all occurences of <oldProfile> with <newProfile> in Profiles\<newProfile>\firststeps\firststeps.bat
7. Edit AppServer\properties\profileRegistry.xml. Make a copy of the <oldProfile> and update the tag values with the <newProfile>. Should look something like this: <profile isAReservationTicket="false" isDefault="false" name="newProfile" path=".....\Profiles\newProfile" template=".......\AppServer\profileTemplates\default"/>
8. Copy AppServer\properties\fsdb\<oldProfile>.bat to AppServer\properties\fsdb\<newProfile>.bat. This step will make the profile available to "AppServer\bin\manageprofiles.bat -listProfiles"
9. Edit config/cells/<cell>/nodes/<node>/variables.xml. Update the USER_INSTALL_ROOT path.
10. Update the path of WAS_USER_SCRIPT in AppServer\properties\fsdb\<newProfile>.bat

This worked for me. Please comment or vote to let me know if it also worked for you.

Answer 2

Here is a build-in WebSphere solution. This works fine on WAS 8.5.5.3.

1. Run your application server in source profile
2. Run command line utility by running script <WAS_INSTAL_ROOT>/AppServer/profiles/<YOUR_SOURCE_PROFILE>/bin/wsadmin.sh or <WAS_INSTAL_ROOT>/AppServer/profiles/<YOUR_SOURCE_PROFILE>/bin/wsadmin.bat (on Windows machines)
3. Execute command in this utility:

   $AdminTask exportWasprofile {-archive <PATH/TO/PROFILE/EXPORT/ARCHIVE>}

4. Create new target profile or use existing and run application server on it
5. Run command line utility for target profile by running script <WAS_INSTAL_ROOT>/AppServer/profiles/<YOUR_TARGET_PROFILE>/bin/wsadmin.sh or <WAS_INSTAL_ROOT>/AppServer/profiles/<YOUR_TARGET_PROFILE>/bin/wsadmin.bat (on Windows machines)
6. Execute command to import profile settings into target profile in this utility:

   $AdminTask importWasprofile {-archive <PATH/TO/PROFILE/EXPORT/ARCHIVE> -deleteExistingServers}

7. Execute command to save new settings into target profile in this utility:

   $AdminConfig save