best way for cloning

[froggay]

Hello,
i'm new on hp workstation administration.
I have some C8000 and some C3750 with exactly the same system on it (cad workstation on hpux11).

what is the better way to clone the entirely workstation ?

all the new workstation arrive with a empty disk.
I have a external DD3 tape drive and an external hardrive that i can use for mastering

actually i put the blank hard disk on a working workstation and use this command
dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t6d0 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t5d0 bs=512k
(assuming that c0t5d0 is my blank disk.)

but C8000 don't have same hardware than C3750, so i pretty sure it will fail

[Sandy Chen]

Hi,

Use make_tape_recovery to create OS image from your existing workstation and then restore it to you new workstation. Hardware difference will not be an issue.

regards,
sandy

[froggay]

thanks for your quick reply.

but with a blank system, how can i access the restore command with no os?

[Pupil_1]

use make_boot_tape command to create a boot image and then use that tape on the workstation to boot !!

This solution will be tedious when it comes to more number of machines to be cloned. It's best to have an Ignite server setup for easy cloning !!

All the best !

[Victor Fridyev]

Hi,

Use make_tape_recovery command (you will have to install IGNITE Sw previously). The command creates bootable tape, which you can use for cloning. Depending on the file system structur on your WStations, you can create an image with all file system or only with /,/stand,/tmp /usr, /opt and /var (the second option is preferable, IMHO). You boot target machine from the created tape and copy applications and users awterward.

HTH

[Laerte Cardoso]

Hi froggay,
Use make_tape_recovery utility and after this put this tape in the target server. Reboot and stop in the 10 seconds. At the prompt, type "sea" (search), and identify the sequential device (for example, P3). After this, the screens are like the standard HP-UX install.

[Fabian Briseño]

If the hardware is the same in every workstation you can use make_tape_recovery on a working workstation and recover on the no OS box.

insert the tape and interrupt the boot process on the no OS workstation and just follow the easy recovery steps

It should take you litle more than an hour to recover.

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

You are correct that dd won't work. The contents of the C8000 disk has hardware-specific files and settings, so the resultant copy won't boot.

To clone your workstations, you use Ignite/UX, specifically the make_tape_recovery command. Since you have 11.00, the command is already on the C8000, just put in a tape and run this command:

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

This assumes that 0mn is your tape drive. You then move the tape drive to the new box and boot off the tape. During the recovery process, a menu will come up to allow changing IP address, disk sizes, etc. Repeat with each new machine.

[froggay]

thanks all for your answers.

I've made a backup and restore on a blank c3750 and it take hours !

is there a qucker way using a external scsi har drive ?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

make_net_recvoery may be faster, but that depends on network hardware and settings.

SEP

[Bill Hassell]

The Ignite backup and recovery takes just about an hour each -- unless you have a massively large VG00. VG00 should be about 8 to 15 Gb. If you did not separate your data from the OS, then you're stuck with a long cloning time. The best way to fix this is to exclude your data from the Ignite backup. Use -x exclude= to exclude selected directories.

Then backup your data directories with fbackup (which is much faster). Clone your system, configure it, then restore the data using frecover. Or use an external SCSI disk for the data to bypass the second tape backup.

[V. Nyga]

Hi,

ws with blank hard disks?

I never get new ws without OS, nevertheless once I tried to set up a C8000 with an Ignite image of a C3750 - it didn't work.

I didn't investigate more, I set up another C8000 and took an image of this for the rest.
With Ignite it takes about 1 hour or less to boot over 100MBit net.

Maybe it works if you patch your system first with the latest HWEnable patches, I haven't tried it.

Most difficult will be to get the graphics device to work, I think.

Volkmar

[LV2DIVE]

There are approved methods and ones that work without any support.

Approved methods are:
1.) Ignite - Best
2.) Cloning of static drives (need 3 drives)
Root is not being copied.
The Gold drive is copied to the 3rd static drive.

Unapproved method is:
1.) Cloning of operational drives (only 2 needed)

On an c8000 it takes a 73GB drive about 40 minutes. See, it is probably less to just ignite it.


/bin/dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t2d0 bs=32768k of=/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0

Good Luck