topic Re: Restoring the Root Backup in Operating System - HP-UX

Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:56:43 GMT

Hi,

Following a suspected disk failure (primary), we are going to replace the disk and load the OS all over again. (HP UX 11.00). The earlier version had several patches installed for SYBASE ASE 12.5, plus there were several OS parameters that were customised. Printer installations too were present. Going through all these processes once again is going to be time taking. I have a clean backup of the entire root file system. I intend to simply restore the root back up after the initial installation. Will it work that way?

Thanks

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Pete Randall — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:01:01 GMT

How was the backup produced? An Ignite backup would be ideal in this case. Any other type (tar, fbackup, dd, cpio) would probably be quite troublesome.

Pete

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Dennis Handly — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:06:02 GMT

Your root backup should have all of your OS patches, kernel and printer configurations.
(Assuming you backed up /stand and /var too.)

I don't know about your SYBASE patches, were these OS patches from HP? If not, they may not be backed up.

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Dennis Handly — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:07:16 GMT

>ME: If not, they may not be backed up.

Of course, if these were on /opt, a disk that didn't go bad, you should be fine.

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:26:03 GMT

Hi

I took the FS backup of root by unmounting all the other filesystems except the ones created during installation namely, /, /stand,/opt,/var, /usr, /tmp. These portions are apparently healthy. I used a tar to create the backup.

Hemalatha

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:32:43 GMT

yes, the sybase patches were downloaded from the HP site. I am not sure about their location. They should be in one of the root directories, presumably.

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:33:25 GMT

No Ignite backup is available

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Deepak Kr — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:52:30 GMT

Hema,

Yes, you can try to restore these FS using tar restore in single user mode and see if you find everything working...

But, to avoid same situation; it is advisable to take ignite backup once you fix all these issue if any.

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

OldSchool — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:40:55 GMT

Is MirrorDisk-UX installed and configured? If the root volume group is mirrored, you shouldn't need to install anything.

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:36:08 GMT

No, there is no mirroring, whatsoever.

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:04:40 GMT

Apart from the patches and OS customisation, I discovered there are about 25 users on this system. If the FS restoration of the root through tar is performed, then will the user accounts, passwords and previliges also be restored? We have a second disk too, housing the applications. Will this disk be recognised too after the restoration without a vgcreate?

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

OldSchool — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:42:25 GMT

well, you didn't say you backed-up /home, so if that where all the users home dirs are, they'll be gone.

on untrusted systems, the account info is in /etc/passwd which is part of /, so that should be ok. printer stuff is in /var and /opt (and maybe /etc...i don't recall) so that'll probably be ok as well.

If you only suspect that a disk is failed, I'd look really closely at confirming before you proceed.

For example: What messages / errors make you "suspect" its failed?

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:26:33 GMT

Hi,
Yes /home was backed. Disk failure is suspected because it is not able to write to the swap device. While start up the swap device is reprting I/O errors. Despite all our attemepts the swap device could not be enabled. That is what makes us suspect that the disk is amiss. We have now configured a secondary file system swap, which has marginally improved the performance. Further, we also have a backup of the root FS prior to the error being reported.

Hemalatha

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Prashanth Waugh — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:03:19 GMT

Hi Hema,

Check the disk using eg./dev/rdk/c0t0d0
#diskinfo /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0

U use ur disk path .

Regards
Prashant

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Khairy — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:24:55 GMT

hi hema,

i refer from your recent post:

"While start up the swap device is reprting I/O errors. Despite all our attemepts the swap device could not be enabled. That is what makes us suspect that the disk is amiss. We have now configured a secondary file system swap, which has marginally improved the performance. Further, we also have a backup of the root FS prior to the error being reporte"

Correct me if i'm wrong, after u configured 2nd swapspace, u able to bring up the system.

If you do, perform make_tape_recovery as recovery from this would be clean and straight forward.

# make_tape_recovery -Av

Rgds

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:23:02 GMT

The system was coming up in either case due to the Psudo Swap. The startup takes 8 min, stuck for 5 min while trying to write to swap and finally ignores the swap and proceeds with the rest of the boot process to bring up the system. The secondary swap is just about 200 MB , the last available space on the disk.

I will do make_tape_recovery -Av right away, that is a good idea.

But how do I restore later?

Thanks
Hemalatha

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Khairy — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:29:44 GMT

hi hema,

to restore:

1) reboot your system
# shutdown -ry 0

2) interrupt the boot loading, u can press any key to interrup the boot process.
You will see bch prompt
bch>

3) search for bootable devices
bch > sea ipl

..and look for sequantial device. This should be your tape drive

4) boot the sequential device. Assuming its the 1st entry P1
bch > boot p1

Choose no to interact with ISL. The restoration should start now.

Rgds

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:13:41 GMT

make_tape_recovery -Av . Is this the command? There is no manual entry for this. I checked. How does one run this?

Hemalatha

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Dennis Handly — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:44:05 GMT

>There is no manual entry for this. I checked.

Check the Ignite-UX Administration Guide:
http://docs.hp.com/en/5992-3336/index.html

This says the man pages are in:
/opt/ignite/share/doc/

This does NOT match the proper SVR4 layout, so I'm not sure how you would have to set MANPATH or use man -M.

More manuals:
Ignite-UX Quick Start Guide: Create an Ignite-UX Server and Cold-Install Clients
http://docs.hp.com/en/5992-4815/index.html

Re: Restoring the Root Backup

Hemalatha_1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:21:22 GMT

That means, running make_tape_recovery requires the Ignite Server to be installed. I don't have it on my server. Can Ignite be installed on HP UX B 11.00 ? I also have a very old system running HPUX B 10.20. Is there a version restiction for Ignite Server?

Hemalatha