Ignite "make_recovery" verification

[Jerry Sims]

Hello Unix world,

Is there a way to verify my Ignite,
"make_recovery" tape to ensure it's a good
tape ? I have had problems where I received
a message "Completed successfully" but when I
attempted to restore the system I had problems.

I have utilized the following commands in the
past to verify if tape is good, but the "/tmp/recovelif" file always has some "failed / error" messages even when the tape is good ?


# mt -t /dev/rmt/0m rew ( 3 times )
# dd if=/dev/rmt/0mn of=/tmp/recovelif bs=2048
# strings /tmp/recovelif | more
# mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
# tar -tvf /dev/rmt/0m

Just want to know if anyone has a successful way of checking and knowing thae tape is good

[Sanjay_6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jerry,

Installaing the OS on some other system using the make_recovery archive is the only sure way of knowing whether the tape is good or bad.

Other than that the test you have done are the only way to generally accept that the tape is good.

# mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
# tar -tvf /dev/rmt/0m

Hope this helps.

regds

[Elizabeth_2]

I would first check the log file freom the Ignite backup (/var/opt/ignite/logs/makrec.logxx) to see if there are any errors.

You can also use lifls or lifcp to examine the boot LIF on the disk, however I recommend booting from the make_recovery tape and interrupting the boot sequence before the non-interactive recovery starts and then abort the install. This will verify whether the first image on the tape is actually bootable.

Aftet you confirm that the tape is bootable I would use the the mt and tat commands to verify the the tar archive of the OS and other files that may have been included by your options in make_recovery.


# mt -f /dev/rmt/0mn rew
# mt -f /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
# tar tvf /dev/rmt/0m

Elizabeth

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Jerry,

The best method is to use the tape. Not very practical though.

Use copy_boot_tape:

copy_boot_tape -u /dev/rmt/0mn -b -d /target_dir

/target_dir needs to be large enough for the bootimage file that will be copied from the tape. It will be named bootimage. On my servers that's about 60MB.

copy_boot_tape can also be used to extract the system archive from the tape (with -a option) or both the bootimage and system archive. See man copy_boot_image for more info.

As already said, to extract files from the system archive (not the boot image), rewind the tape, fsf 1 file, then either use tar or pax.

Darrell