restoring a system disk using a fibre attached tape library

[Lucie]

I have a test OpenVMS 7.3.2 system that I have been configuring as my test system. I lost a virtual disk last night and it affected my system disk. Of course I had not shadowed my system disk it yet.
I do not have a local attached tape drive. My tape library is fibre attached and so I am at lost as to how to have the system see the tape drive and restore my system disk. I think I will need to use wwidmgr to see a tape library. The library is attached to a production cluster.
For most OpenVMS bigot this is a no brainier but us amateurs bigots just starting out this is mind-boggling. I appreciate any advice. :)

[Uwe Zessin]

The WWIDMGR is useful for diagnostics and boot/dump device setup, but you don't need it to 'configure' a tape device.

If I remember correctly, the sequence is:
- boot from a recent CD-ROM [*]
- SYSMAN> IO FIND_WWID
- SYSMAN> IO AUTOCONFIGURE
- $ show device $2$mg

[*] the FIND_WWID mechanism has existed for some time, but early implementations wrote a file and then required a reboot :-(

[Phillip Thayer]

I would say you need to boot from a CD and then do the Autoconfigure in SYSMAN to be abel to see the tape drive. (If you don't see it right away then look for a FIND_WWID command in SYSMAN IO and use it first.) Once you are at that point you can use the tape drive to restore your disk.

Phil

[Robert Atkinson]

Lucie, the following information from our DR plan may be useful.

Rob.


To boot the system from CD, place an â OpenVMS Operating System Diskâ CD into the CD-ROM drive. The VMS version must be at least 7.2-2, so that there in support for the HSG80 controllers.

At the chevron prompt (â >>>â ) type â >>> show deviceâ .

Look for the CD-ROM drive in the list indicated by the letters â CDâ in the device type column. This is usually a â dqâ device, as below :-

P00>>>show device
dga150.1001.0.7.0 $1$DGA150 HSG80 V87S
dga150.1002.0.7.0 $1$DGA150 HSG80 V87S
dqa0.0.0.105.0 DQA0 CD-224E A.8D
dva0.0.0.0.0 DVA0
eia0.0.0.2004.1 EIA0 00-08-02-1A-66-6C
eib0.0.0.2005.1 EIB0 00-08-02-1A-66-6D
pga0.0.0.7.0 PGA0 WWN 2000-0000-c92f-7594
pka0.7.0.7.1 PKA0 SCSI Bus ID 7
pkb0.7.0.6.0 PKB0 SCSI Bus ID 7
pkc0.7.0.106.0 PKC0 SCSI Bus ID 7

Once you have located the CD drive, boot it using this command :-

P00>>>boot â flags 0,0 device

â ¦.replacing device with the device name you located, i.e. dqa0.

The â -flags 0,0â tells the system to boot from SYS0 using a non-conversational boot. To perform a conversational boot you would use â -flags 0,1â .

You should see a message similar to â block 0 of dqa0.0.0.105.0 is a valid boot blockâ . The system will then continue to boot.

Once the system has booted from CD, which normally takes about 5 minutes, you are presented with a menu system, like this :-






Select option 7 â Execute DCL commands, and wait for the dollar (â $â ) prompt to appear.

Once the prompt has appeared, you can execute normal DCL commands.

If you are restoring from Fibre attached devices, you may need to issue the following commands first :-

$ MC SYSMAN
IO FIND_WWID
IO AUTO
EXIT

Before attempting to restore any of the disks, ensure that all of the physical disks still exist by issuing a â $ SHOW DEVICE DGAâ command.


The system disk will be restored from tape. It will be the first save-set on tape sets 1 and 2, called DR$1$DGA1.BAK.

We will assume that the system disk device is $1$DGA1: and that the tape device is $1$MKB400. If this is not the case, then you must substitute the correct device names for the hardware delivered and configured. The DR suppliers technician will be able to assist in this.

To ensure that the tape is not accidentally overwritten, ensure the write-protect tab is in place and a red box is showing on the front of tape.

11.1. Restore Commands
To restore the system disk from tape, issue these commands :-

$ MOUNT /FOREIGN $1$DGA1:
$ MOUNT /FOREIGN $1$MKB400:
$ BACKUP /IMAGE $1$MKB400:DR$1$DGA1.BAK /SAVE â
$1$DGA1: /BLOCK=65535 /IGNORE=LABEL

NOTE: Remember to substitute the device names for those configured.

You should not see any other messages for some time (about 15 minutes), until the data has been copied to disk.

To ensure the restore is working, pressing CTRL-T should show the IO increasing, once the correct save-set has been found.

Once the system disk has been restored, the process will return back to the dollar prompt. If any other messages are received, you should act on these as appropriate.

Dismount the newly created system disk by issuing the command :-

$ DISMOUNT $1$DGA1:

also dismount the tape :-

$ DISMOUNT $1$MKB400: /NOUNLOAD

Then remount the drive and check that the directory structure looks ok by typing :-

$ MOUNT /OVERRIDE=IDENT $1$DGA1:
$ DIRECTORY $1$DGA1:[000000]

[Jan van den Ende]

Robert,

if you are trying to post snippets of MS Weird (sometimes incorrectly spelled as Word) or PDF to this forum, then first export it as ASCII text.
No totally bullet-proof, but MUCH more text will be tranferred in a readable font.

hth

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Uwe Zessin]

A way to detect potentially bad characters is to use the [Preview>>] button an view the result.

[Volker Halle]

re: Uwe,


the FIND_WWID mechanism has existed for some time, but early implementations wrote a file and then required a reboot


A reboot is not necessary anymore, but at least SYSMAN> HELP IO FIND_WWID (in V8.2) still talks about entering the tape info into SYS$SYSTEM:SYS$DEVICES.DAT

Did someone really sucessfully access a FC tape when booted from the OpenVMS Alpha CDROM ?

Volker.

[Lucie]

Thanks for all your help. I was not able to see the drives even after sysman commands but come to find out I had to change some of the zoning on the fibre. Once that was done I was able to go into sysman and find wwid and do io auto and see the drives.