Ignite "Golden System Image"

[Karl Balsmeier]

Hi All,

After a close call last week where a full root volume and a bad disk almost made the system unbootable, the HP rep present who saved our hide suggested the obvious solution of usi9ng Ignite to produce what he referred to as a "Golden System Image"

After viewing the apropos man pages, I am looking for a "recipe" or "howto" someone in this forum has nio doubt already authored or composed an in-depth reference thereof.

Any links or information are much appreciated.

I am quite impressed with the forum thus far, it shows peer-review is one of the best approaches, thanks much!

Karl R. Balsmeier

[Patrick Wallek]

The first thing you need to do is download and install the latest version of Ignite/UX.

The main Ignite page is:

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

The Ignite/UX download page is:

http://software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

Once you have installed it, you will want to create a make_tape_recovery tape for your system. Ignite currently only supports creating this on DDS and DLT, I believe. The command you will want to use is:

# /opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -I -v -a /dev/rmt/?mn -x inc_entire=vg00

You will want to replace the ?mn with the appropriate tape drive number. BE SURE to use the no-rewind tape device (the one with the mn on the end).

The above command will create a bootable tape with your entire VG00 on it. If you want to learn more about the command do a:

# man make_tape_recovery

If you ever need to restore any files from your tape you can do that too.

# mt -f /dev/rmt/?mn rew

# mt -f /dev/rmt/?mn fsf 1

The above will space forward over the bootable portion of the tape

# tar -tvf /dev/rmt/?mn

This will list the contents of the tape

# tar -xvf /dev/rmt/?mn dir/filename

The above will restore the file. Not that there is NOT a leading / or ./ there. The 'tar -t' command will give you full listing and let you determine if what you need is there.

Good luck.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Karl,

Patrick gave you excellent details on ignite.

Create make_tape_recovery tapes regularly (you can recycle them) can save you a lot of time and efforts. To use make_tape_recovery, you just have to install Ignite-UX product.

However, to install multiple systems and to recover the systems over the network instead of using tapes, you can setup an ignite server. Once you install ignite product, simply run /opt/ignite/bin/ignite in your X-windows, and it will take you through setting up the ignite server. Basically, you will install one server fresh with all the software, patches, kernel parameters etc., installed/configured with your site specific customization. You will then store that image on the ignite server and use it to install other systems through network from the ignite server. This is called "Golden Image".

-Sri

[Con O'Kelly]

Hi Karl

The others have given you excellent advice on Ignite. I would add that if you have multiple systems to backup you should look at make_net_recovery. You can use this in a script that runs locally and will back up an image of your system to an Ignite Server.

What I have done is to run a weekly script from cron using make_net_recovery to back up the system to the Ignite Server. This takes all the headaches out of changing tapes etc.
This command is very similar to make_tape_recovery except that it backs up the system to an Ignite Server rather than tape.

If you want an example of a script to do this, let me know.

Cheers
Con

[Kevin Wright]

Quite simply, download Ignite, install it on a server with alot of disk space to create your Ignite server. Then run make_net_recovery on all your clients that you wish to 'back up'.
If your server ever becomes unbootable, boot off the Ignite server and re-install your OS.
boot lan