How to Ignite from tape?

[Mike Burk]

I received an HP-UX 10.20 Ignite tape from our tech partner. How can I ignite my box with it? Both the source and the target are J5600s.

[Edward Alfert_2 · Accepted solution]

was it created using the make_recovery command?

If so,
1) put it in the tape drive
2) abort the boot process by pressing a key when it says so
3) type "search"
4) notice the P0, P1, P2, etc entry for the tape drive and then issue "bo p1" or whatever.
5) the tape will erase your system and install whatever is on the tape.

[Victor_5]

Hi Mike:

Ignite tape is for your system, vg00, clone. Here is the steps.

Boot the server from the tape machine containing your Ignite tape. Select "No" when asked if you wish to interact with the IPL.

After a few minutes you will see the message "Recovery tape created from system on . Press return to continue".

Choose "Install / Media Only" and select the Advanced Installation tab to customize your installation.

It will take about 45-minutes to load the root volume group configuration. All displayed messages will be written to /var/opt/ignite/local/install.log.

[Mike Burk]

How do I know if make_recovery was used when the tape was made? This is my first time using Ignite-UX so I am very ignorant on the subject. Thanks for your help.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

You can check if the tape is a make_recovery or not in several ways.

1) if you do not have Ignite installed on any of the box, you can do

mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
tar xvf /dev/rmt/0m /etc/passwd

If it is successfull, then it is a make_recovery tape

2) If you have Ignite installed on any of the systems, you can do a

/opt/ignite/bin/copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -b -d to_some_directory

This should successfully create a boot image called bootimage in your to_some_directory.

Then you are sure that it is bootable and is done through make_recovery.

-Sri

[John Waller]

Mike,

I don't believe you can tell if its a make_recovery tape any other way then trying to boot from it. I've tried in the past using mt and tar commands with no luck.

When you boot from an ignite tape it is a similar process to performing a fresh install from CD. Hopefully whoever created the tape has included the -t for title when they created the tape so you can tell where it is from and what OS version it is. You can always abort if after booting from the tape you are not happy about continuing as the install process does need a certain amount of manual intervention.

[Magdi KAMAL]

Hi Mike,

1. Put your Ignite tape into drive.
2. logoff every user from the system.
3. shutdown -ry 0
4. Interrupt the boot process, Interact with ISL ( Yes )
5. Search path ( SEA command ).
6. boot p#
will # is the number given by the SEA command output which stand for the tape drive number.
7. Follow instruction and interrupt the download process to give your own values ( hostname, IP address, Netmask, broadcast and filesystems values ... )

Good luck.

Magdi

[Eileen Millen]

To check a tape:
mt -t /dev/rmt/0m rew
mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf - forward skip one
To get table of contents
pax -vf /dev/rmt/0mn

You can also get files back from the tape with tar as a test.
you would do the 1st 2 lines again to forward past the LIF area
tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0mn pathname

Eileen