backup os on hp ux help please...

[touny]

Hi
I am an aix admin and i have to do some backup / restore on hp-ux (hp9000 / v B.11.0).
here the situation:
2 servers (1 in prod / 1 in test).
No ignite install , no jfsonline install ...
never have a backup os... Gosh !

Well for me hp appears like the worst unix system as it doesn't have by deafault the tool that permit to make the os backup and dynamic increase fs... Too bad... AIX is really better ...

Well this is not the point.

I have to install ignite on my hp servers the problem is that I don't have jfsonline and /opt is full...
1) Is it possible to install ignite under another fs (I can create a specific fs not sure for the size ?) instead of /opt?

2) How to do it ? yeap if I can avoid sam it will be great I prefer command line... to be sure of wat i am doing...

3) after that if i want to do an os backup on a tape (there is a tape drive attached to the server), how to do it (online command as I will probably make a script...)

By the way I have read a post where someone said that ignite made a good backup os only when oracle is stopped ... Is it true ??? Because there is no way that I can stop in prod the appli only for doing a backup os !

4) how to verify that my backup is correct ?

5) how to make a restore ? (I never see the menu on the console ? if the system is down I put the tape on the drive then power on ?...)

Yeah I know it is too much questions and you will probably answer me by some links on hp docs but too many docs and pages I didn't reall y have time and in rush, just need a quick start then i can handle it with the docs...

Any help is welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers

Al

[Chan 007]

Al,

Check the following 2 links that answers all your queries

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1087522

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=996179

Chan

[Court Campbell]

First off don't bash HP-UX if you want help with it.

Have you thought about maybe removing some files out of the /opt directory or removing some software. I have seen Oracle boxes which have Java JRE's 1.2.x-1.5.x. You can remove the older versions if no one is using them. I realize there is not a whole lot to remove from that directory but it is a good start.

Once you have the Ignite product installed you would run the following command:

make_tape_recovery -I -x inc_entire=vg00

This will make an interactive install of the ignite image. If you need to verify it you can ignite a spare box and see if works. To restore from an ignite you need to get on the console of the server via gsp, mp, or whatever and during the boot you should be prompted to interrupt the boot process (usually 10 second time period). You will then enter into the BCH. type SEARCH to find a list of bootable devices. Then use BOOT to boot if the ignite tape. PATH will be something like P0 or P1. You need to look for the boot device that says sequential media. After that it should start the ignite install process. You would then get an interactive install in which you could actually resize your filesystems, rename the server, etc. But in the end if you did nothing at all it would be a replica of the server.

[Court Campbell]

P.S. Ignite is free and can be chosen during an install. Also, if you are running oracle you should really look into OnlineJFS. As you know you can resize filesystems on the fly using it. Also it adds some extra mount options like mincache=direct and convosync=direct which would allow the oracle SGA to interact directly with the filesystem disk that used those mount options. This overrides the double buffering that occurs between the SGA and the filesystem buffer cache.

[Matti_Kurkela]

1.) It might not be possible to force the Ignite package to install to any other location than the default: but if you can create a separate /opt/ignite filesystem, that might solve your problem. Apparently about 110M is enough for Ignite for HP-UX 11.00.

If you do this and the new fs is not a part of the volume group vg00, remember to add "-x include=/opt/ignite" to the Ignite make_tape_recovery command line to ensure your backup contains all the tools required for bare-metal restore.

2) More information would be needed to give a detailed answer, but if there is free space in vg00, basically: "lvcreate -L vg00" to create a new logical volume, "mkfs -F vxfs /dev/vg00/rlvol" to create a filesystem on it, "mkdir /opt/ignite" to create a mount point and "mount /dev/vg00/lvol /opt/ignite" to mount it. Edit /etc/fstab to make it permanent.

To install Ignite, downoad the .depot file and use swinstall to install it:
swinstall -s /full/path/to/ignite.depot Ignite-UX-11-00

This should start the installation automatically, but if you omit the "Ignite-UX-11-00" part, swinstall will open an UI window (if DISPLAY is set, it will be an X11 GUI; if not, a text-based menu system).

3) The normal command is something like this:
make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -t "descriptive text"
This assumes you're going to use the first tape drive attached to the system: if there are several tape drives, use the -a option to specify the correct tape device (default is /dev/rmt/0mn).

*ANY* kind of filesystem-based backup of Oracle will be useless if Oracle is active while the backup is done. As the backup system reads Oracle's files sequentially, each data file will be backed up at its own point in time. When this backup is restored, the data files, indexes and redo logs will be out of sync with each other, if any database actions happened while the backup was running. The result is a corrupted database.

To get a valid filesystem-based backup, you must somehow "freeze" Oracle's files for the duration of the backup. One way to do this is to put the database in "backup mode" for that time. The way to do on-line Oracle backups usually involves Oracle creating archivelog files, which document each change that happens in the database. They are incremental, so that when e.g. Oracle switches into writing the archivelog file number 5, you're free to backup all archivelog files numbered 4 and below. To restore from an archivelog-based backup, you must have an unbroken chain of archivelog files from the latest full backup to the present.

4.) Try to restore it somewhere. It's the only way to be absolutely sure that the backup is both correctly specified and done on a readable media.

5.) If the server is set for autoboot, there will be no menu as such. When you power on a HP-UX 11.00 server, the first thing you'll see is the self-test display. It can take quite a while, if all self-tests are enabled.

After the self-tests, the server displays a short description of the detected CPUs and memory. At this point, you must press any key within 10 seconds time. The display will say "Press any key in 10 seconds to interrupt...".

When you do that, the server will be in PDC boot prompt. To boot from a tape, first insert the tape. Type "search" or just "sea". The firmware routine will create a list of all detected mass storage devices (=all potentially bootable disks and tapes). A tape drive is identified by the word "sequential". Each boot-capable device is identified with a P. This numbering scheme does not exist if you don't use the search command.

If the tape drive is e.g. device P3, you need to type "boot P3" (or just "bo p3") to boot from a tape. The system will ask whether or not you want to "interact with IPL" - answer N at this. The rest should be mostly automatic and self-explanatory.

[DCE]

Well for me hp appears like the worst unix system as it doesn't have by deafault the tool that permit to make the os backup and dynamic increase fs... Too bad... AIX is really better ...

Last forty servers I installed had Ignite installed by default. they also had on line JFS It is installed by default with two of the three OS packages, and an option with the third - can't help it if your company is too cheap to buy it.



I have to install ignite on my hp servers the problem is that I don't have jfsonline and /opt is full...
1) Is it possible to install ignite under another fs (I can create a specific fs not sure for the size ?) instead of /opt?

Either remove some software from /opt, or create a sub mount point under /opt for ignite (or another large app already on the system)

By the way I have read a post where someone said that ignite made a good backup os only when oracle is stopped ... Is it true ???

Ignite makes a good back up of VG00 (in the example command from Court) as long as the oracle data is not in vg00 there is no problem.

5) how to make a restore ? (I never see the menu on the console ? if the system is down I put the tape on the drive then power on ?...)

Put the tape in the drive, interupt the boot process, search for bootable devices and select the tape drive

[Ralph Grothe]

Could it be that my reply to this thread has been removed?
I could swear to have gotten served it after I had submitted it, but on the next revisit it somehow disappeared.
If this was the case I would at least like to be informed by the moderator who deemed it inappropiate.
It consumes some effort and time to rig up a reply (even to make mistakes), and it makes me lose any interest in continuing to do so if I find some of my replies to expire to the big blue yonder...

[touny]

Hello guys,

Thank you very much for your help. I am very impressed with the quality of the answer.
I have heard that the HP forum was a good one and you confirm it !

So I follow your advise, I have create a new fs /opt/ignite and install ingnite with the command you give me !!!

Thanks again.

Tomorrow I will make my first os hp-ux backup !! hi hi and I hope it will work.

the command online to make it is it :
/opt/ignite/bin/make_recovery -vaC

and to check:
/opt/ignite/bin/check_recovery

is it correct ?

Thank you again, you're so good !

Cheers

[Ralph Grothe]

For a quick peek at the log you could check

$ more /var/opt/ignite/recovery/latest/recovery.log

However, I think the place and name of the obsolete make_recovery command was a bit different (I have forgotten).

These days one should better run make_net_recovery, or as in your case make_tape_recovery.
I would use

# /opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -v -x inc_entire=vg00

If you're short of tape you could exclude some redundant subdir trees with e.g.
-x exclude=/tmp -x exclude=/var/adm/crash