Migrate UX 10.2 to New Server

[unixfirstimer]

Hi, I am a complete novice with Unix, and have been tasked with migrating from a HP9000 D220 to HP900O D250.(Dont ask!) I have got as far as installing HP UX, but cannot seem to configure the volumes. The volumes on the old box were 4.2 GB, the new ones are 9 GB. I also cannot access our database. I would appreciate any help. Thanks.

[Matti_Kurkela]

Welcome to the ITRC Forums!

If you're truly a beginner with Unix, you've received a rather challenging task for your skill level.

First, an important thing to know would be the disk configuration of your D220 system.
Could you please run "bdf" on it and paste the output to this thread? Feel free to obscure any directory names related to your organization or other sensitive information if necessary: I'm only interested in the general layout of the system.

Second, you mention a database. This is not a standard feature of the HP-UX OS: it's probably a separate product like Oracle or IBM DB2. As it's currently running on a 10.20 system, it's sure to be some ancient version that's been out of any official support for quite a while. Do you have any more information about the database?

Third, if you have problems with disks, it might be necessary for us to know more details about your hardware configuration. The easiest way would probably be a full ioscan listing.

Fourth, it would be easier to help you if you described in detail what you've managed to do so far, what you're trying to do now and exactly how it's failing.

When run using the root account, this command will generate a text file in /tmp directory, which you could then attach to this thread:

ioscan -fn > /tmp/ioscan-listing.txt


I guess you've been installing HP-UX from the vanilla 10.20 installation CDs. That's fine, but if your goal is to duplicate the old set-up in the new hardware, there is a tool that might spare you a lot of effort. It's called "Ignite-UX", more specifically "creating a recovery tape". Of course, this is assuming that you have a suitable SCSI tape drive(s) available...

If you want to try this, the command you need is either "make_tape_recovery" (newer versions of Ignite-UX) or "make_recovery" (older versions). If Ignite-UX is installed, its man pages should be available in the system. Try these commands:

man make_tape_recovery
man make_recovery

When using Ignite-UX recovery tape to clone a system, the general idea is to create a bootable tape that contains at least the full content of the system volume group (vg00); if your tape drive has enough capacity, it might be possible to create an "image" of the old system as a whole.

When you boot the newer system using the recovery tape of the old one, the recovery tape will present an UI that's identical to the HP-UX installation program (with some very minor differences). If you don't change anything, the new system will be installed as an exact replica of the old one. But you can use the installation UI to change things, e.g. network addresses or disk configuration, if you wish.

(I guess this message turned out to be 50% requests for more information and 50% trying to supply you with some Googleable key words...)

MK

[doug hosking]

If I remember right, 10.20 was released around May of 1996, nearly 14 years ago. Given that, I'd think a significant part of your planning should be focused around disaster recovery, making sure that you can get replacement hardware when needed, making sure you have current backups, etc. Similarly, because 10.20 has been out of support for a number of years, you face other challenges regarding availability of patches, whether for functional or security reasons. I certainly would not feel comfortable connecting that system to the Internet given that new patches are no longer available for it.

Keep in mind that something as simple as replacing a failed disk on that system may be a challenge, because the disk technology is significantly different than the disks that are commonly sold today. While you might still be able to find replacements, even the best replacements are still of roughly the same age, and thus more likely to fail. For that reason I'd be extra paranoid about having current backups.

You will find many people here who are quite willing to try to help anyone who asks in a civil way, but you're more likely to succeed if you can give us background information. For example:

What is the primary use of the system being migrated? How critical is it to the success of your company?

What applications are most important to you? (The answer to this might influence things like disk volume configuration options, among other things - whether to use logical volumes or whole-disk file systems, and which options in the ocnfiguration of those.)

Do you have installation media (and any required license keys) for all of the applications?

What are the budget and time constraints? Are you forced to stay with 10.20, or could you consider using something newer that might be more readily supported by HP? For example, if you could get a system that was 8 years newer (and much better supported) for $2000 or less, would that be an option?

How long do you expect this system to be in service? That would certainly influence recommendations about how to proceed.

What are the specific command lines and error messages that are giving you trouble?

You say you're new to UNIX but perhaps are very skilled with other operating systems. If you can tell us more about that, we might be able to explain some UNIX concepts in terms you might be more familiar with. For example, if you understand that UNIX newfs is similar to the DOS format command, you can probably learn a lot with "man newfs" as opposed to first trying to teach you about what it means to format a file system.

There is a graphical user interface called "sam" that will help walk you through many common system administration commands, and may give you more useful error messages than if trying to do the same steps manually.
Although the command line interfaces to UNIX give you great power, they can also be unforgiving to those who are less experienced, particular when run by superusers. Sam has at least some protection against needlessly shooting your own foot off.

Although it may be hard to believe today, at the time of 10.20, a 9 GB disk was rather large. It would be worth double checking what the supported limits of HP-UX were in that release for supported disk, max. size of disk partitions, logical volumes, size of bootable disks, etc. Some of your trouble with volume configuration might be that you are exceeding the supported system limits. For example, you might be forced to use logical volume manager tools instead of just the newfs command to create file systems, or you may find that certain patches must be installed before a given command works on a disk bigger than 2 GB or 4 GB.