Ignite image, copy from tape to disk

[Eric Bradley]

Is there a procedure on how to copy an Ignite image created using make_tape_recovery from tape to a disk on an Ignite server so that the image is still useable such that you could boot a server to the Ignite server and ignite that server with the image over the network?

[Fabian Briseño]

HRLLO ERIC.

Check this link out to see if it helps.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1158402

[Scot Bean]

Should be possible, but not simple. Ignite does not provide commands to do this.

1. 2-step process: restore a machine from the tape, then create a make_net_recovery image from that machine.

2. 1-step process: Extract all tape data. Figure out how to use all the files and create the right setup/configs on an Ignite server to do the net recovery.

[Eric Bradley]

So tar or dd from tape to disk won't work and give me a useable image on disk?

[Al Miller_1]

This is theoretically possible, but would be difficlult and error-prone. Recovery archives consist of, among other things, an archive (gzipped tar file) and a config file. You would need to extract those files from a tape, modify the config appropriately, and place them on an Ignite-UX server so they could be treated essentially as network recovery archives.

It makes a difference whether you have a tape created on a PA system vs IA system.

On PA tapes, the archive file is the second file on the tape. The first file is a LIF image which itself contains several files, including the install kernel, install filesystem, and Ignite-UX config file.

IA tapes are much different. These are ANSI labelled tapes, with a tape header label and labels before and after each file on the tape. In addition to these label files, there are things like a tape descriptor block file, some EFI code, and a bootloader executable on the tape before you get to the config file, and eventually the archive file. I've forgotten the exact number, but there are something like 25 files on an IA make_tape_recovery tape. IA tapes are created by a shell script called make_ipf_tape that is part of the Ignite-UX product, so you could look at that script and learn how the tape is constructed.

Then if you play around with dd enough, you can get the relevant files off the tape, and then compare them to files created by make_net_recovery, add appropriate entries to /var/opt/ignite/INDEX, and it should be possible, but of course unsupported by HP, to do what you are asking about.