Can I install OS in this way?

[Fred.Wu]

Two L3000 with all the same hardware environment.
I installed one system and run "make_tape_recovery -A" to create a recovery tape, and then do recovery to the other machine.It seems ok but HP Call center engineer told me this is not a good way to install OS.
Is anyone have same experience and your system runs ok till now?

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I can't find a better way to install OS than make_tape_recovery if you don't have an ignite server where you can do a net recovery.

There is one thing that you need to keep in mind before create make_tape_recovery image.

Make sure your /etc/rc.config.d/hp*conf files are not hardcoded with the system's MAC addresses before creating the image. This will duplicate the MAC Addresses if you install the tape image on the other server.

I am a regular user of make_tape_recovery and I am pretty sure you will get a lot of recommendations from others.

-Sri

[Ian Kidd_1]

I've done it on very-slightly different hardware successfully. Needless to say, there was some clean-up activitity that needed to be done, but it did work

It isn't the HP recommended method of using Ignite to clone HPUX though. I think HP recommends a "golden image" using make_sys_image for that task. I've never used it though and don't know much about it.

[Rajeev Shukla]

If you have exactly similar systems (hardware exactly similar) then you can do this way. But you have to take care that you dont put this machine in network without changing the IP, host name etc..
Though its not the right way, best is you install an Ignite UX server and build all systems from there. But as i said if its exact replica in Hardware then you need not worry your system will run fine.

Thanks
Rajeev

[RAC_1]

make_tape_recovery is the best option for this. Hp recommands make_sys_image, do not know much about that.

[Michael Tully]

I've created stacks of systems from the same OS (make_recovery) tapes and couldn't find a better way to do this for our site (we haven't got a system use as an ignite server). Each one has worked perfectly ever since. We cut our tapes in interactive mode, so that you can change the IP hostname etc.

# make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v -a /dev/rmt/0mn

[Ravi_8]

Hi,

Your idea of cloning will work. you can proceed.

[Laurie Gellatly]

I've done this several times recently on "identical" equipment. Much faster than a
whole OS load and patch HWE, QPK etc.
If you're running mirror/UX you'll need to
establish that again by hand once you're done
but that's pretty straight forward. (I even
include my original script in the image do
this and its there ready for me).
Other advantage is that you then have a known
working disaster recovery tape on hand.

Cheers ...Laurie :{)

[Steven E. Protter]

You can probably get away with the Ignite process. You can intervene in the recovery on the second box and change the host name and IP address and all.

make_tape_recovery and Ignite Golden image both use make_sys_image with different options to build the image.

There is a cookbook for building Ignite images. The target hostname and ip are picked at the beginning of the process. You can even do mirror/us in the process.

We are currently on the road to using Ignite to build a golden install image and have two other servers periodically receive the image, probably quarterly. It will let us deal with patch issues without bothering our developers or production users. These images do include oracle software, and we've tested pushing the oracle software out through Ignite.

The cool part is you can push an image from your Ignite server or pull it onto the client. You have to leave some of the r protocols (rlogin, remesh, rsh) to do ignite and that's not secure. Better to leave them off and turn them on right before you're ready to push an image.

The summary is this:

Build the Golden Image.
Push or pull the Golden Image.

I took a 5 day course in CA to learn this and the book is very useful. I spent two solid weeks playing around to get the push process to work the way I wanted with all the little details.

P