Essential backup files to restore operating system

[Jeffrey Shannon]

Do you know of a bare essential list of files that are necessary to restore an HP-UX operating system?

[Christopher McCray_1]

short answer, I wouldn't play around and use make_recovery or make_tape_recovery (depending on the version of ignite/ux you have). That way you can be assured that you will have a copy of you core vg. See the man pages for list of options.

Hope this helps
Chris

[Kevin Wright]

Absolutely, that is what ignite is for, it creates an image of your OS (vg00 + whatever VG you choose) on a bootable dat tape.
it's a free product from hp.

[Craig Rants]

I agree, ignite is the best way to go, it is easy.
But to clarify, what you probably want:
/etc - config files
/var - this one depends on you (think of var as the variable dir)
/usr - same as var
/opt - software
/ - depends on what you put in
what you probably don't need:
/bin - binaries are pretty static
/tmp - just a dumping ground
/dev - device files are easily recreated

Hope this helps

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

Hi,

Have a latest make_recovery tape with you always. This will take care of your most of the things.

Apart from this have a copy of the output of sysinfo.sh.

latest ignite can be found at http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX
and you can find sysinfo.sh at hp's porting centre
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/

GoodLuck
-USA..

[John Bolene]

Obviously not using ignite, otherwise you would not have this question.

I have to say that ignite is one of the best FREE tools that HP has.

That reminds me, I need to make another image of one of my test systems.

Ignite puts the system back to the way VG00 was backed up with very little input, just sea at the isl prompt to find the tape sequential device and boot using that path. In about an hour, your machine will be back.

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

Yea Geoff,

Ignite is the way to go, don't bother any other way.
Remember, you'll still have to get the os up and running to restore the files.. might as well do it all in one go:

http://www.hp.com/products/IUX/

Later,
Bill

[Roger Baptiste]

Jeff,

Install ignite (free software).
Run /opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -i
-> interactive version which guides you to run
the command. this will make
a bootable tape of your
system with all Vg00 stuff
in it.

In case of disaster, you
can boot with this tape and
simply let it restore its
contents to the disk.

-R

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

You really have to struggle to restore the operating system if you dont' use ignite. You need to install OS first and then restore selectively from the backups and it is a pain.

So the best choice is to get Ignite installed and use make_recovery or make_tape_recovery to periodically prepare the image of the system.

If you want to restore the configuration, I have a small script that can be modified. You can use it after loading the OS.

-Sri

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Jeffrey:

An Ignite recovery tape is a short answer.

Consider that /etc has configuration files. /usr is obviously a command repository. The "/" directory holds /dev so there are your device files (although you could argue that most can be dynamically recreated). /sbin ian't separately mounted, but is sure essential for single-user mode! /stand holds the kernel. /opt has lots of goodies for maintenance and support (Predictive Support, STM, glance/measureware), so I'd hate to lose it. And /var holds the *critical* installed software database in /var/adm/sw. By this accounting, that leaves /home and /tmp, and for the purposes of an operating system, well, you really don't need anything restored in either.

Thus, for me, the "essential file list" is one Ignite recovery tape of vg00.

Regards!

...JRF...

[linuxfan]

Hi,

James put it very nicely, In my opinion this should be in the Ignite-UX web page as well ;)

Like others have said, you could write scripts to backup some of the files, but i would highly recommend using ignite, makes your life easier.

Also i had read somewhere, good sysadmins are VERY lazy people (But get a lot done with minimum effort) ) and ignite makes one lazi-er, bcoz it does a lot More.

-Regards
Ramesh