How do I copy an HP-UX 9.10 install tape (dds)

[Don Ferderber]

Hi All ...

Stupid question ... I have an HP-UX Install tape (dds) for HP-UX 9.10 (s300/s400) which is bootable (remember these ? heh heh). I need to make a copy of this tape that will be bootable as well. Anybody able to provide me with some steps ?

Regards,
Don

[Don Ferderber]

BTW ... I am currently on an 11.00 system

[doug mielke]

I haven't tried with HP, both other Unix has allowd me to use dd to the 'no rewind' version of the tape drivers, and just keep doing it until the tape runs out.

The other vendor like to have many end of tape markers throughout to help manage the installatiun

[doug mielke]

same post with typo's corrected: (sorry)

I haven't tried with HP, buh other Unix's have allowed me to use dd to the 'no rewind' versions of the tape drivers, and just keep doing it until the tape runs out.

The other vendor like to have many end of tape markers throughout to help manage the installation

[Don Ferderber]

It is not quite as simple as that ... the blocking factor is a major issue here as the boot lif at the beginning of the tape is set up different then the actual data on the tape.

Back to you guys ...

[Bill Hassell]

This may work (no guarentees):

Use dd with a bs=2k for the first file on tape and bs=10k for the second file.

Like many Unices, there are no utilities that are smart enough to understand the size of each record and preserve this information when writing to another tape. It gets a lot worse if you try to copy to a file and then back to the tape.

[melvyn burnard]

I always used to copy 9.x tapes by doing:
dd if=/dev/rmt/0mn of=/tmp/bootfile bs=2k
dd if=/dev/rmt/0mn of=/tmp/osfile bs=10k
mt -t /dev/rmt/0m rew

This assumed you had only one tape drive, and htat there was enough disc space to create the two files.

I then used a blank tape and did:
dd if=/tmp/bootfile of=/dev/rmt/0mn bs=2k
dd if=/tmp/osfile of=/dev/rmt/0mn bs=10k
mt -t /dev/rmt/0m rew


and then attempt to boot to the tape to see if that works.
HTH