hpux 10.20 core reinstall

[Franken]

We have a 10.20 installation for our developers that is experiencing a large number of problems mainly due to age. They wish to stay at 10.20. HP recommended we reinstall the core os. If I run swinstall to reinstall the core os, what is the best way to pereform the reinstall and what contingencies do I need to worry about. I.e. will I lose all my devices, root access and network settings?

Thank you very much,
Franken

[harry d brown jr]

If it's possible to do a cold install, I'd suggest that way before I would suggest doing a forced reinstall of the "core-os".

But, before you attempt anything, make sure you have a couple of good backups, including a couple of "make_recovery"'s.

Also, make sure you have the latest version of 10.20.

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

It is possible to reload the CORE-OS fileset from the install media, but I wouldnt recommend it. Reason being that the reload will replace all your HP binaries and libraries with ones from the install media, but any patches or applications youve loaded since the last install (which patch the core-os binaries and libraries) will be lost, necessitating the loading of lots of patches after the CORE-OS reload. If youre 10.20 install has been around a few years then youve had patches loaded on top of patches on top of patches. If you reload the CORE-OS fileset then you will need to load a later GR patch bundle immeditately after, but this will then make your 10.20 install look different to how it was before you did the reload. Surely this is not what you want ?

Even if you must do the reload I would use an ignite tape to do it because when you reinstall from the ignite tape it will basically do a new install but load on top all of your apps and software, in a nice clean ordered, but ignite wont touch anything other than vg00 which may well mean any of your apps on vg01/02 etc. will not work, you will need to reload them afterwards manually.

Either way, this is a ton or work and resulting problems just because someone says your 10.20 install is old ? I wouldnt not do it unless someone could come up with some far more detailed reasons why they want a reload done.

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Franken,
You are asking for lots of trouble. I have found it very difficult to overload same version on top. Best thing is to reinstall new OS if you have no other choice. If you can install new General Release patch that will bring your system to higher level.
If you decided to cold install then make sure you have backup. Make a list of application that you need. How to configure that apps. If you have external disk prepare the document how to bring them on.
Go over on your steps many times. If you miss anything it is going to be your fault. Make sure to tell your upper chain that there will be some minor problems for couple days.

Sachin

[Tim D Fulford]

Franken

This is beside the point but, you want to re-install your system to fix a problem! Someone is giving you a serious run around.

Personally I would do a cold install & save all the config type of files

attached if a script I use to get these I then tar up /tmp/upgrade. It's relatively generic take a look at it & add any other important files you want

Tim

[Bill Hassell]

A cold reinstall by itself will not solve your problems as the most recent CD of 10.20 is several years old--in other words, you can cold install but you must immediately load the SupportPlus patches from the March or June 2001 CD. Do not try to use 10.20 with just a cold install. If you do not have a SupportPlus CD, go to the ITRC web pages and download the patch bundles (there are several hundred).

Another very important issue: When you first installed your machine, it may have had no additional I/O cards installed. This means that LAN0, disks and your tape drive defaulted to the first (and only) instance, usually on the core I/O card. However, the core I/O card is usually the last in the I/O chain. So you add another LAN or SCSI interface and these devices will become higher instance numbers. All is still OK.

But if you leavre those cards in place when you reinstall, the instances will be assigned in I/O order, meaning that the add-on cards will be instance 0 and the core I/O devices will be higher instance numbers (ie, LAN0 is now known as LAN3, or the internal taoe drive is now called /dev/rmt/2m. Under no circumstances do you restore anything in /dev from the original system. Now there are complex ways to get around the instance numbering problems so that your scripts and config files don't have to be changed, but by far the easiest way is to remove anything that wasn't in the original machine, install 10.20, then add the I/O cards and devices in the order they were added in the past (reboot each time) and finally add all the patches.

Since you did not provide any details about the current problems, a reinstall, even fully patched may not solve your problems if they are related to kernel parameters or other kernel settings. Mail me if you need detailed help in fixing your system: blh@atl.hp.com

[Franken]

I would like to thank everyone who repsonded to my question, this is my first time at this forum and it is by far the best I have experienced in about a decade. The machine I was asking about is one for which I recently inherited responsibility. It has primarily been used as a development platform.
Well, based on the responses I received I am definitely going to reevaluate the need to reload the core os and actually leave that step as a worst case scenario when nothing else works.
At this time I am going to see if I cannot repair some of the problems we are having rather than pull out the 12-gauge cd.

Based on your responses I am a little surprised now that we were advised to reinstall the core os.

Thank you very much,
Franken

[Franken]

On our 9000, the permissions on over 4700 files are "out of whack". We would like to set the file permissions to the installation defaults. There is no tool I know of that would allow me to reset the file rights unless I can concoct some type of shell script. These file permission errors were caused by a large number of developers making a lot of changes over a long period of time. If anyone knows of such a tool or script I would appreciate it. Failing that I may be able to figure something out.