OSF/1

[pietro60]

I have a Alpha station 3000 with the OSF/1 ver 3.2 and now I would like to transfer the disk to unix emulator. I have a tape backup (backuped with dump command)and the hard disk SCSI ( it is running). My question is how can I transfer the whole hard disk or tape backup to image file?

[Pieter 't Hart]

basically just like system restore on the AS3000.

on the emulator you need to configure
- system and data disks
- cd rom drive
- tape drive

to restore
- boot the emulator from unix CD
- restore system and data partitions
don't forget to make the systemdisk bootable.

[pietro60]

Yes, I can boot from CD, but I don't have it.
do you know a command like add, restore or by ftp that transfer the complete hard disk to a image file as .img, .vdisk or .dsk?

Thanks

[Pieter 't Hart]

NO, basically you can not.
Unless the vendor of the emulator has a utility to do that, or provide this as a service, you will need a similar OS to restore them (like booting the CD in the emulator).

Dump back-ups the system in a OSF/1 (unix) format.

To begin with, there is not a "single" image on the tape.
dumps are made per filesystem.
your original OSF system probably has three of those file systems.
- / (the root file system)
- /usr
- /var

Can you still boot the old system?
Check if OSF1 V3.2 has a "btcreate" utility like it's successor Tru64 V5?
If so you can try to create a bootable tape, to boot the emulator.
It's slow but it might work.

[John Manger]

One solution might be to use another Un*x system to capture a 'dd' of your system disk into an NFS mounted file, then ftp the created dd image from the Un*x system to the Windows box running the emulator.

Something like ....

mount unixsys:/bigdisk /mnt
dd if=/dev/rzNc of=/mnt/V32.image bs=128k
(where rzNc is the OSF/1 system disk)

ftp V32.image -> Windows box
On the Windows box start FreeAXP and use V32.image as its boot disk.

Note that the oldest OSF/1 release that FreeAXP can run is V3.2A (FreeAXP emulates an Alphaserver 400 4/166)

John M

[pietro60]

Thanks very much.
I have another question, if my hard disk is divide in two parts /dev/rrz0g (partition /) and /dev/rrz0a (partition /usr) how can I have only a file image?

[Pieter 't Hart]

@pietro,
john suggests to "dd" the whole disk, so all partitions will be in a single copy.

@john (+pietro),
I don't think this will work.
Even if you'd "dd" the disk to an nfs share you still cannot use this copy in an emulator.
The AXP emulator on a windows-host will use it's own file format, so most likely you still need to "dd" data from the nfs-copy to the disk-image in the emulator, hence you need a running unix in the emulator.

same like ".iso" and ".img" images.
some, but not all, programs can read both.

try this (from wikipedia)
http://osvirtual.net/en/hp-tru64-unix-5-1a-2001/
it should point to a running tru64 v5.1 image.
you may be able to use this image to do the restore from tape.

[John Manger]

Pieter (&Pietro),

> The AXP emulator on a windows-host
> will use it's own file format

Ummm... not so. FreeAXP and PersonalAlpha use direct 'images' of a disk, usually called 'containers'. Containers are simply files with the bytes/blocks of a 'disc' within them, nothing else.

A dd of rdisk/dskXc or rrzXc will copy an entire physical disc. Putting dd's output to a filestore file (under Windows or in Un*x, with, or without NFS) creates an exact copy of the dd'd disc. Pointing FreeAXP or PersonalAlpha at the container you created allows the emulator to use it as if it were a real physical disk - it thinks its DKA100 or whatever.

If the original disk was bootable, the container will be bootable, if the original was not bootable the copy will not be bootable, but could be made so with disklabel. The copy is identical in all respects - boot block/sectors, disklabel, data, everything - and thus functions exactly as a physical disk.

John M

[Pieter 't Hart]

Hi John,

I've some experience with Charon-VAX (full version) in the past, and none with Charon-AXP.
I've never tried loading a direct image, I still doubt if it will work.
But by occasion I surely will try out your suggestion. It certainly would be a nice option instead of booting from cd image and restoring from tape.