topic Re: Problem with cloning root disk in Operating System - HP-UX

Problem with cloning root disk

Anthony Grouzdev — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 08:34:30 GMT

I have rp8420 server with one nPar. But I've reconfigure it half-and-half in two nPar. I need to clone the system disk from the first nPar to another.

I've copy rdsks with dd and move the copy disk to new nPar.

I've boot in "-lm" mode and renew the LVM config. And in this way I can boot the system manualy starting with "-lm" mode. But the default boot process dumps with error "PV missing" when its try to activate vg00.

What is correct way to boot from this disk to new partiotion? Or may be it's imposible?

Re: Problem with cloning root disk

RAC_1 — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 08:51:20 GMT

I do not think that dd is for such purpose. There will be a lot of things to change, like kernel is for old system, boot strings, fstab and whole lot of other things.

You should install OS/ignite on the other disk and then restore any non-root disk backups onto it , if you want.

Anil

Re: Problem with cloning root disk

Anthony Grouzdev — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 09:11:12 GMT

Thanks ... I understand this.
I know that its not correst to do this in production.

But i would like to understand - is it possible or not theoretically and in practic.

I think it must be not too difficult.

In my minde i need only change lvm config, remake the kernel (why? ), may be update ioconfig ... that's all. In more older hpuxs (10.x) there were change_root_lvm command to do this.

And in this case I want to understand is it possible or not in 11i?

Just theoretically and for my interest.

Thanks a lot.

Re: Problem with cloning root disk

harry d brown jr — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 09:16:13 GMT

http://www.software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=IGNITEUXB

live free or die
harry d brown jr

Re: Problem with cloning root disk

Anthony Grouzdev — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 09:18:50 GMT

ok , thanks :)))

Re: Problem with cloning root disk

TwoProc — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 15:35:50 GMT

Anthony,

This answer is for learning and test systems, it's not a good answer for production systems. Caveat Emptor. You could end up with a system that doesn't work/boot/etc.

I think I made this work before by fixing a few things, boot command, LIF area, fstab etc. Make sure that the boot command in the LIF does NOT have a hardware path - newer versions of HPUX don't need it. Old commands would have been like:
mkboot -a "hpux (53.3.0;2)/hp-ux"
but new ones (11i) boot with just the command:
"hpux"
which takes the whole hardware path problem out of there.
Of course, I'd recommend a command of:
"hpux -lq" to turn off quorum checking on the root volume group.

And one more thing you can try:
change the fstab entry for "/" to point to
/dev/root instead of where your current root is (probably /dev/vg00/lvol3). The /dev/root file is a pv that looks a LOT like /dev/vg00/lvol3 (or wherever your root drive is) -except that it has different major and minor numbers. But, if you do a lvdisplay on it - it will have the same contents. Now, you can't do an lvdisplay on it b/c it's not in a volume group - you can fake it by using a symbolic link to that file from a working volume group.
cd /dev/vg[mostanything]
ln -s /dev/root .
lvdisplay -v /dev/vg[mostanything]/root

you can see its exactly the same as your root partition.

Now, take that link out quickly and don't forget ( I don't know what it would do if a service call of some type was made to the vg). Like I said DO THIS ON TEST SYSTEM! Anyway, that's what old D series servers are for ...

Well, I brought up a system this way once to retrieve data with an upgrade I was testing/doing. Also, this was a long time ago, and I'm not sure of what else I had I to do. This might be what's holding you up. Also, I did this b/w a 9.x and a 10.x upgraded disk - I really don't know if this would work at all in 11.0 or 11i.

Re: Problem with cloning root disk

RAC_1 — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:13:59 GMT

It may be therotically possible, never tried it though. Too many things to take care of - kernel, LVM, fstab, network config, applications etc. etc.

So why not old install or ignite??