How to validate a recovery tape from make_recovery?

[John MacLerran]

Dear HP-UX forum,

I'm a relative newbie to HP9000 system administration, and am trying to come up to speed. I'm going to be patching an HP-UX 11.11 system in order to install a Fibre Channel adapter, and one of the tasks mentioned in the patching guide is to make sure the system can be recovered in the event of an error.

I used the following command to make a recovery boot tape:

make_recovery -ACiv -d /dev/rmt/0m

And, after about 45 minutes of processing, I get the message that the process was successful.

My question is: is there any way to verify the completeness / correctness of the tape once it's been created? On the HP3000 server (my background), there is a program that allows one to check the SLT (system load tape -- like a recovery boot tape). That program will verify that the core os files are present on the tape and optionally report the amount of disk space needed to recover from that tape. I was hoping to find a similar utility on the HP-UX side, but neither 'man -k recovery' nor 'man -k check' nor 'man -k ignite' turn up any likely candidates.

At first, I thought check_recovery is what I wanted, but that program seems to check the recovery status file against the current system configuration as a method of determining when the system has changed enough to warrant a new recovery tape.

So, am I pursuing an untamed goose or what?
Thanks!

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

You could check the files on the tape with tar

# mt -f /dev/rmt/?mn rew
# mt -f /dev/rmt/?mn fsf 1
# tar -tvf /dev/rmt/?mn >>/tmp/ignite_log

Ignites itself creates logfiles in /var/opt/ignite/logs

You should upgrade your ignite version, ignite uses the make_tape_recovery command in the latest versions.

http://www.software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=IGNITEUXB

Hope this helps,
Robert-Jan

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi John,

R-J has ably pointed out how to validate the integrity of the tape itself - whether it can be successfully read or not.
The *only* way to validate the entire recovery process is to apply the tape to a sandbox system to see if it completes successfully.
I know of no other way.

Rgds,
Jeff

[John MacLerran]

Thanks, Robert Jan -- Even though we received this server new in March, I'll check to see if I need the new Ignite version.

Thanks Also, Jeff. I was afraid that this might be the case. I guess, even on the HP3000 side, the only way to *truly* verify that a boot tape is bootable is to attempt to boot from it. At least the check program gave me an automated way to check for obvious inconsistencies. Still, it feels like I just took a giant step backward.

[Jeroen Peereboom · Accepted solution]

L.S.

I have something in between:
* use tar to check the contents of the tar archive (the second part of the recovery tape)
* use another system (sanbox) to make sure the tape is really bootable (but don't install anything).

I do not have the luxury of a sandbox system.

JP.

[John MacLerran]

Thanks, JP,
I don't have a sandbox system either. If I did, your process would probably work. I wonder if there is some channel within HP where I could request an enhancement to Ignite to verify a boot tape?