alternate rootvg

[Doug O'Leary]

Hey;

I'm working on a last resort DR recovery process for a client which will be used in the event everything else has failed. Which, if the last couple of DR tests are any indication, happens regularly.

Side note: I haven't been involved in any of the DR testing yet but will probably be from now on... lucky me.

Basically, the process is to use one of the two internal 140 gig hard disks as an alternate root vg, recover all the required info to that, then reboot off that disk to have the system back.

I have procedures for pa-risc boxes that are somewhat dated but did work. (http://www.olearycomputers.com/ll/hpmvrootvg.html). I'm trying something similar with an itanium 2620.

My steps for creating a bootable disk are accurate as I used them to mirror the OS disk then verified by booting off the alt disk. Worked great. Without going into the exact command lines:

1. create partition table then partition $rdsk
2. insf to create new devices
3. mkbook -el $rdsk
4. efi_cp boot commands onto ${rdsk}s1
5. pvcreate -B ${rdsk}s2; add to existing or create new vg.

I then created new vgroot, requisite lvs, (lvol1-3 being contiguous, nonrelocatable) and mounted everything under /mnt/root. Finally, "find ${fs[*]} -xdev -print | cpio -pdumvx /mnt/root

After that, I updated lvlnboot.

# lvlnboot -v
Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vg00:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2 (0/1/1/0.1.0) -- Boot Disk
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2, 0

Boot Definitions for Volume Group /dev/vgroot:
Physical Volumes belonging in Root Volume Group:
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2 (0/1/1/0.0.0) -- Boot Disk
Boot: lvol1 on: /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2
Root: lvol3 on: /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2
Swap: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2
Dump: lvol2 on: /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2, 0

After udpating /mnt/root/etc/fstab to reflect vgroot vs vg00, everything looks right. When I run a efi_cp on the alt disk, I see "boot vmunix"

# echo $rdsk
/dev/rdsk/c2t0d0
# efi_cp -d ${rdsk}s1 -u /EFI/HPUX/AUTO /tmp/blivit
# cat /tmp/blivit
boot vmunix

However, when I reboot and select alt boot from the scroll menu, I get:

Loading.: HP-UX Alternate Boot: 0/1/1/0.0.0
Load of HP-UX Alternate Boot: 0/1/1/0.0.0 failed: Not Found

Any idea what I'm missing?

Thanks for any hints/tips/suggestions.

Doug O'Leary

[Ivan Krastev · Accepted solution]

You missed:
setboot -p 0/1/1/0.0.0 (primary path)
setboot -h 0/1/1/1.0.0 (secondary)

View paths with lvlnboot -v.

regards,
ivan

[Doug O'Leary]

Outstanding! That was it. Thank you very much. Points submitted as soon as itrc lets me :)

I'm a bit surprised that I can't use the alt path to boot a different vg... That seems odd to me. Any rate, it works.

Thanks again.