Operating System - HP-UX
1748089 Members
5017 Online
108758 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

 
SOLVED
Go to solution
Fred Martin_1
Valued Contributor

confidence test - make_recovery

I've created a bootable DLT tape using make_recovery. The man pages say that some controllers are not supported with DLT so I'd like to know if it works.

I'm worried that if I try to boot from this tape and it fails part way through, I'll be left with a screwed up non-bootable system.

Are my fears justified or should I just try it?
fmartin@applicatorssales.com
6 REPLIES 6
Trond Haugen
Honored Contributor

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

I'm not saying this will work or not, but what good is the Itnite backup if you don't know it it's usable?
Any chance of getting hold of an extra disk you can test on? I not I would have taken an extra full fbackup and tried. I would suspect that if there were any problems with the DLT it would be booting from it.

Regards,
Trond
Regards,
Trond Haugen
LinkedIn
Eileen Millen
Trusted Contributor
Solution

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

Hi Fred,
You could try to do an index of the tape.
You would forward skip past the 1st record.
mt -t /dev/your_device_path
mt -f /dev/your_device_path
pax -vf /dev/your_device_path
or do a tar listing of the files.
tar -tvf /dev/your_device_path

Eileen
Paula J Frazer-Campbell
Honored Contributor

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

Fred

To start with download and install latest version of Ignite.

The command is now mate_tape_recovery.

/opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v -a /dev/
rmt/0mn


Download from here:-http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

Look at the release notes as some hardware is not supported.

The latest version uses a 11.11 kernel and will not handle earlier pci Fibre cards.

You should also be able to find if your DLT drive is bootable there.


HTH

Paula
If you can spell SysAdmin then you is one - anon
Paula J Frazer-Campbell
Honored Contributor

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

Hi

Correction

For mate_tape_recovery read make_tape_recovery


Ooops


Paula
If you can spell SysAdmin then you is one - anon
Darrell Allen
Honored Contributor

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

Hi Fred,

First, I'd run make_recovery with the "-i" option so that your recovery sessions will always be interactive. That way you can test booting from the tape but quit it you don't want to actually recover.

I'd also start using make_tape_recovery since make_recovery is being phased out. If you don't have a recent version of Ignite, you should upgrade.

Ignite has a copy_boot_tape utility that you can use to read the boot image from the tape. I use:
copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -d /var/tmp -b
This copies the boot image from the tape to /var/tmp/bootimage and displays the files it contains. It takes about 60MB of space in /var/tmp on my system. It's not as good a test as actually booting from the tape but I can't take down the production system every time I make a backup.

Darrell
"What, Me Worry?" - Alfred E. Neuman (Mad Magazine)
Todd Bowden
Valued Contributor

Re: confidence test - make_recovery

Fred,

Go ahead and try to boot from the DLT. We have in one of our systems a DLT ignite backup and it works just fine. The test is to see if it boots off the tape. If you get to the IGNITE Interface than you know it worked. It will not write anything to your production disks until you configure it to. So dont worry be happy and test, test, test.

Todd