Bootable Tape Backup

[Don Clayton]

Which backup method should I use to make a tape that I can boot from? I am looking for the HP-UX equivalent of the AIX mksysb command.
Will this command cover all filesystems or only the root filesystem?

[Sandip Ghosh]

If you want to make a emergency recovery tape you can download Ignite UX from HP Website for free. By that you can create the emergency recovery tape with complete backup of VG00.

Sandip

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The closest equivalent is an Ignite/UX make_tape_recovery. This is intended to restore /dev/vg00 but you do bring the machine back complete with all patches and installed software (as long as /opt and /usr are in VG00). You then rely upon your more traditional backups for remaining VG's. In the best of worlds, you still run make_tape_recovery but you never need it because you are also running Mirror/UX, all your disks are hot-pluggable, and thus you never need to shutdown for a failed disk.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Don:

"Ignite" software implements this ability.

You can obtain both documentation and software from here:

http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

Ignite software can be installed (via 'swinstall') in a few minutes and does not require a reboot. 'man' pages are provided with the installed software, too.

Once installed, you can create a bootable tape of volume group vg00 containing the operating system's filesystems use:

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

This tape is bootable and can be used to clone your server; recover a defunct vg00; or simply reinstall the OS while resizing its filesystems.

'vgexport' map files are automatically created for each non-vg00 volume group and a 'vgimport' is attempted for them if the recovery tape is invoked.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Sajid_1]

Yes, make_tape_recovery is the command. You can make the bootable tape with that and can reload the OS if necessary in future:

# man make_tape_recovery
# man make_recovery (old version)