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Ignite bad LIF

 
Tamer Shaalan
Regular Advisor

Ignite bad LIF

Hello all professionals;

I am making ignite of my important machines periodically. one of these machines has crashed, when I tried to boot from recovery tape, it gives me the following error:

error:bad LIF magic
error reading IPL

when I tried another tape, gives the same. But if I used a tape of another machine, It seems to continue properly, but I abort this boot.

What is the problem??????

Is it from the tape media or from the machine???

How to solve this problem???

Installing UX & configuring this machine from A-Z will be so awful !!!!
Success is a journey, not a destination
10 REPLIES 10
Michael Tully
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Just to discount one problem, can you boot one of your problem tapes on another system or at least read it back.
to read it e.g:
# mt -t /dev/rmt/0m rew
# mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
# tar tvf /dev/rmt/0mn
Anyone for a Mutiny ?
KapilRaj
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Looks like a media error

Have u replaced the tape drive recently and these tapes were created by the old drive which anyway matches with other nodes?

Why not connect a diffrent tape drive and try a boot ?

Regds,

Kaps
Nothing is impossible
T G Manikandan
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Did you use the -n norewind option during the creation of the ignite images with the make_tape_recovery command.
Chauhan Amit
Respected Contributor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

To solve this problem try running a cleaning tape through the tape drive
and try booting again .

If this does not fix the problem, you can check whether the really tape
contains a LIF area using the Ignite/UX command "copy_boot_tape". More
information on the copy_boot_tape command can be can be found in the man
page copy_boot_tape(1m).

If you are not a part of solution , then you are a part of problem
Tamer Shaalan
Regular Advisor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Michael ,

I did what you told me to do (to read the tape back with commands you said),I had the following output:

Tar: blocksize = 0; broken pipe?

is this a problem ???

why you used /dev/rmt/0mn in only last two commands ??

Any ideas ???

Thanks.

Tamer
Success is a journey, not a destination
Chauhan Amit
Respected Contributor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Hi Tamer,

Error suggests tar has trouble reading back the data from the tape. Did you specified the blocksize when tarring to the tapes? if not then try the same.

Also check the Link below :

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=327706

Regards,
Amit
If you are not a part of solution , then you are a part of problem
Tamer Shaalan
Regular Advisor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Hi Amit ,

I made these tapes by make_recovery not tar. By the way, I didn't find man entry for copy_boot_tape !!!???

Tamer.
Success is a journey, not a destination
Chauhan Amit
Respected Contributor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Hi Tamer,

'copy_boot_tape(1M)' is Ignite-UX Command.
This command can be used as it extracts the LIF image created when 'make_recovery' (or 'make_tape_recovery') is ran.
Next, the command, 'lifls -l' on the LIF file or image. The output of that command will show the date the tape was created in the YY/MM/DD format.

An expmale of this command is as follows:
# copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -b -d /tmp

This will also create a LIF file called "bootimage" which is placed in whatever path is specified with the '-d' option.


The output of the 'copy_boot_tape' that we are interested in gets displayed to the screen as should look like the following:


# copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -b -d /var/tmp
Rewinding tape /dev/rmt/0mn.
Extracting the boot area to /var/tmp/bootimage.
14530+1 records in
14530+1 records out
Boot file contents.
volume ISL10 data size 281239 directory size 3 02/08/05 14:23:07
filename type start size implement created
===================================================
ISL -12800 16 240 0 02/08/05 14:23:08
AUTO -2289 256 1 0 02/08/05 14:23:08
INDEX BIN 264 1 0 02/08/05 14:23:08
CONFIG BIN 272 35 0 02/08/05 14:23:08
HPUX -12928 312 880 0 02/08/05 14:23:08
INSTALL -12290 1192 26990 0 02/08/05 14:23:13
INSTALLFS -12290 28184 31744 0 02/08/05 14:23:18
FWWKAR BIN 59928 1 0 02/08/05 14:23:19
INSTCMDS BIN 59936 10782 0 02/08/05 14:23:20
SYSCMDS BIN 70720 45475 0 02/08/05 14:23:30
SCRIPTS BIN 116200 42 0 02/08/05 14:23:30

Rewinding and ejecting /dev/rmt/0mn.

[C]opy to new tape or [E]xit:


Regards,
Amit
If you are not a part of solution , then you are a part of problem
Tamer Shaalan
Regular Advisor

Re: Ignite bad LIF

Hi Amit,

I tried "copy_boot_tape" command with my tapes several times and got the following :

# ./opt/ignite/bin/copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -b -d /boot
Rewinding tape /dev/rmt/0mn.
Extracting the boot area to /boot/bootimage.
64251+0 records in
64251+0 records out
Boot file contents.
lifls: Can't list /boot/bootimage; not a LIF volume
ERROR: lif image corrupted. Tape heads may need cleaning.

Of course, I made cleaning about to 10 times, but- unfortunately - has no effect !!!

I think it is obvious that this is a media problem, and this is the time of most silly administartor's tsak, Reinstall & reconfigure all parameters !!!!!!

Last question, how to get the man entry for copy_boot_tape ?? I tried several forms but have no o/p ???!!!

Thanks a lot Amit,

Tamer.
Success is a journey, not a destination