topic Re: Old school question in Operating System - HP-UX

Old school question

Kelli Ward — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 14:44:16 GMT

Hi All,

I have an old s800 system running HP-UX 9.04
I need to create a backup to tape of this system. Normally, I would use fbackup but, I would like to try to generate a bootable backup, if possible, as this tape will be used duplicate the system at another site.
I know you can use dd to do this, but there's a small catch, I'm not sure of. This system is partitioned.
Instead of /dev/dsk/c201d#s0, it has the followng sectors set up:
/dev/dsk/c0d0s6 (Standard boot sector)
/dev/dsk/c0d0s8 / filesystem
/dev/dsk/c0d0s10 swap
/dev/dsk/c0d0s14 and s15 (extra "empty" directories)
I can see that I will need to do at least the following:
dd if=/usr/lib/uxbootlf of=/dev/rmt/0mn bs=2k
dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0d0s8 of=/dev/rmt/0m(n) bs=64k

Will I also need to add any of the other partitions?
Also, is this type of backup reliable at all. The only experience I have with this was a failed recovery attempt from a dd'ed tape, that I did not generate. (So, I do not know exactly how it was built.)
I will not be able to upgrade the OS on this system as it contains specialty programs that will will not run above HP-UX 9.
Thanks,
Kelli

Re: Old school question

melvyn burnard — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:44:18 GMT

Well first thing to say is ther eis no Ignite/UX versin for 9.x as far as I know.
Second point to make, is the "other" system EXACTLY identical?
If it is, then take a look at thecopyutil procedure in hte off-line diagnostics.
Please note that this HAS to be run with the system shutdown, and can take 2-3 hours. It will make a bootable tape containing all of the stuff/layout in the boot disc ONLY, i.e. you cannot include any other discs.
There is no way to verify oit, other than to recover from it and test.
If the system is NOT identical, then this will probably not work anyway.

I suggest you rather look at implementing documentation on hopw the system is laid out, how to recreate it and then use fbackup to be able to recover to the other system after first installing it.
Failing that, you could try to add in an identical disc on the working system, and then use dd, kmboot etc to exactly copy the disc, and then test if you can boot from htat disc. If that works, take it to the other site and test it there.
best of luck

Re: Old school question

Martin Johnson — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:55:29 GMT

I would recommend the copyutil over the dd. copyutil saved the day for me more than once. Be advised that the hardware you are restoring to should be identical to the hardware you are performing the backup on. Otherwise you can experience problems, including not beinng able to boot.

HTH
Marty

Re: Old school question

Pete Randall — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:00:41 GMT

Kelli,

This is just "blue-skying", if you will, but what about trying to mimic what ignite does? Ignite first dumps the bootable image stuff onto the tape and then follows that with a tar backup of vg00. If you can figure out exactly how ignite does that, you should be able to duplicate.

For What It's Worth,
Pete

Re: Old school question

Wodisch_1 — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:10:58 GMT

Hello Kelli,

if I remember correctly then you will have to use slice "c0d0s2", i.e. the whole disk! But since the disks at that time used to be less than 4GB it should not matter too much...

Just my $0.02,
Wodisch

Re: Old school question

Kelli Ward — Wed, 17 Jul 2002 13:46:01 GMT

Hi All,
Thanks for your replies.

Melvin - Although Ignite for 9 wouldn't be cost effective for HP, I'd be done with this project if I had it. (Another one coming up to, I could only wish - sigh) ;) The other site is out of town so any backup I create will ship to them with instructions on recovery.

Martin - Thanks for the copyutil info, unfortunately this unit does not have it installed.

Pete - An interesting idea, but I probably don't have time to implement.

Wodisch - You are correct, except on this system. I attempted, in the past to dd this system to another drive and received a Can't stat error using 2. I noted when adding another drive to it using SAM, it has an Add drive - Not using the Logical Volume Manager option.
It will allow you to pick and choose the various slices, including 2 (for the whole disk)
I have to wonder if the person who built this either used something like this to initially build the drive or was used to the HP-UX 8 way of doing things and it didn't quite gel. I'm not really sure, it's a little too old for me.
And yes, this is a strange drive. ;)

Thank you all again for your replies, I think, in light of time constraints, I will opt for fbackup and instructions.

Points to follow.

Kel

Re: Old school question

Martin Johnson — Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:58:05 GMT

copyutil is on the maintenance CD. You need to boot from the CD.

HTH
Marty

Re: Old school question

Kelli Ward — Wed, 17 Jul 2002 15:10:57 GMT

Duh!
Your right.
Teach me for going on vacation.
Come back and the brain stops working.
Thanks,
Kel

Re: Old school question

Frank Slootweg — Thu, 18 Jul 2002 12:16:46 GMT

'Late' response:

COPYUTIL is indeed the best approach.

The dd(1) method in your base posting will *not* [1] work for a Series *800*. It is a Series *700* method. See the (9.X) hpux_800(1M) versus hpux_700(1M) manual pages for details.

[1] "not works" means you can not *boot/restore*. Of course the dd(1) commands themselves work fine, i.e. the give you a perfectly good, but useless, tape.