Attemping to make a Bootable Tape (Disaster recovery if need new HDD)

[andybarrett1]

Hi Thanks for reading 

We are attempting to make a disaster recovery Tape for our HP700/715 Servers running HPUX 9.05

dd if=/usr/lib/uxbootlf.700 of=/dev/rmt/0mn bs=2k   ' makes the bootable section on tape (no rewind)

then

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c201d6s0 of=/dev/rmt/0m bs=1024k   'copies entire disk image to tape 

Our issue is the first command  to make boot seems to  work ok :-

345+1 records in

345+1 record out 

but second command reports :-

I/O error

7627+0 records in

7626=1 records out 

And when we try to boot from tape does not see the boot at all 

Help Welcome please 

Andy

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Andy where are you getting this process from. HP-UX9.05 is straining the edges of my memory significantly, but I don't recall being able to boot from tape being a thing until Ignite/UX came in with I think HP-UX10.x?

Back then a more typical way of providing a "DR copy" of the boot disk was to use the offline diagnostic (ODE) utility COPYUTIL (usually available at the ISL prompt prior to launching HP-UX - may be installed on your boot disk, but may not - may have to find a support media CD-ROM)

COPYTUTIL wouldn't create a boot-able tape, but it would create a disk image that could be restored also using COPYUTIL to a fresh disk if one failed.

[andybarrett1]

Hi Duncan

Andy where are you getting this process from. HP-UX9.05 is straining the edges of my memory significantly, but I don't recall being able to boot from tape being a thing until Ignite/UX came in with I think HP-UX10.x?

>>> From the hpux-700 man pages 

Back then a more typical way of providing a "DR copy" of the boot disk was to use the offline diagnostic (ODE) utility COPYUTIL (usually available at the ISL prompt prior to launching HP-UX - may be installed on your boot disk, but may not - may have to find a support media CD-ROM)

COPYTUTIL wouldn't create a boot-able tape, but it would create a disk image that could be restored also using COPYUTIL to a fresh disk if one failed.

>>> On Our system we have not any of that luxury .... Just DD and MKRS.

>>> Have just tried again as a single user but still no joy  I dont understand the I/O Error and the Records In Vs Records Out Difference ?

All we need to do is get a reliable image dump from existing machine that we can put back on a new HDD should we need to ?

We have also tried the MKRS option we found on here but that didnt work either 

mkrs -v -q -tdat -f /dev/rmt/0m -r /dev/dsk -m700      ' To make bootable tape 

Then

fbackup  -0 -i  /  -f /dev/rmt/0m     ' File Backup 

Any help at all would be great as we have six of these workhorses ......But know HDD do fail 

Are any Manuals around for this version (9.05) ... All we can find is relationg to 10 or 11 

Many thanks 

Andy

[Duncan Edmonstone]

COPYUTIL should be on an install/recovery CD (in the boot LIF partition) - do you not have one of those? I don't think it would necessarily have to be for a 09.05 CD.

[andybarrett1]

Hi Duncan

We have no CD Media and NO CD Drive on the HP9000 / 715

We "Did" have tapes a long time ago but the tape streamers are no longer working and eat the tapes anyway 

We have recently bought a Solid state tape emulator that uses flash media 

You see our issue

Andy