Installation question

[Ray Herbig]

I have an install question. I am going to be installing hp-ux 11 on a system. This system is attached to a disk array and has an internal disk. During the installation processes after selecting the target disk it says something to the effect "that all data will be destroyed" and it lists all disks. Does it actually destroy the data on all disks or does it really mean the volume group information isn't going to migrated, so therefore they will appear "blank"?

Thanks

[Patrick Wallek]

The only data that will actually be "destroyed" is the data on the disk(s) that you are actually installing the operating system on. The data on all the other disks should still be available to you once you finish the install.

If it is data that you need after the installation, you can attempt to vgimport those disks. 'man vgimport' for more information.

[Helen French]

When you install the OS, you need to select the one disk where you want the OS to reside. The installation will remove all data from ONLY the selected disk. The old VG information from ONLY that disk will be destroyed.

You can preserve the data as well as VG information (do a vgimport after install) on other disks.

Make sure you 've selected only one disk for installation.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hey Ray,

No & Yes.

No, only the disk(s) designated for vg00 will be overwritten.

Yes, the VG info - NOT DATA -on all non-vg00 disks would be lost to the new OS. One normally creates current conf & map files, places these on another server to retrieve after install - to be used to vgimport those VGs back.

Rgds,
Jeff

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

The targeted disk *only* will be overwritten ("destroyed") and thus knowledge of the remaining disks "lost".

To recover the data on the other disks, as you have deduced, do a 'vgimport' on them afterwards. Thus, is it preferable to preceed your installtion with:

# vgexport -m /tmp/mapfile.vgNN -s -p -v vgNN

...and preserve the mapfile(s) for subsequent 'vgimport;.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Ray Herbig]

That was fast. The message just seems a little misleading and I'm just being paranoid.

Thanks.

[S.K. Chan]

What it means is all data on the SELECTED disk (ie the disk you want the OS to be installed on) will be overwritten. All other information or data on the rest of the disks remains intact. Obviously if you want to vgimport the disk array back you can do that after the installation. Just make sure you vgimport it before you do the installation, saving the LVM info onto a mapfile which will be used later in the vgimport process.

[Patrick Wallek]

Being paranoid in the unix world can be a good thing. Don't worry about it.

If you really want to be paranoid and make absolutely sure no data from your external disks will be overwritten, then remove the cable(s) going to your external disk array. This will allow the installation process to see ONLY the internal disk(s), assuming that is what you want to install to.

After you are done, reattach your external disks and do what you need with those disks.

[Jeff Schussele]

See....this is WHY I'm in IT.

Patrick's low-tech solution for a high-tech problem is elegant in it's simplicity. Something that can be in short supply at times in the IT world.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Kelli Ward]

Hi,
Technically, you could have it destroy data on all your disks, but you would have to specifically tell the install process to install choose all the disks to do it.
I like and use Patrick's suggestion all the time.
If I'm worried about it, I physically disconnect the disks I want to protect.
A little paranoia is a good thing, I bet we've all been bit when not paranoid enough.

HTH,
Kel

[Rajeev Shukla]

The data will be destroyed only on the disk which you choose as the target disk for installation(boot disk )
And note the voulme group information will not be imported by itself. You'll have to import all the volume groups from disk array if you wish to have original data back from disk array.

Cheers
rajeev

[Richard Ace_1]

Make Absolutely sure that you have all your config files before you start the upgrade save to a
non-VG00 Filesystem, PC or another server. Good one to have is:

strings /etc/lvmtab > /dump/upgrade2003/lvmtab.out

Even though you will have the ???tee??? stuff from the vgexport in vgexp1.out and vgexp2.out etc???.

BEFORE UPGRADE EXAMPLE

Make sure here you have a -p

vgexport -p -v -m /dump/upgrade2003/vg01.map /dev/vg01 |tee /dump/upgrade2003/vgexp1.out

vgexport -p -v -m /dump/upgrade2003/vg02.map /dev/vg02 |tee /dump/upgrade2003/vgexp2.out


AFTER UPGRADE EXAMPLE

mkdir /dev/vg01

mkdir /dev/vg02

mknod /dev/vg01/group c 64 0x010000

mknod /dev/vg02/group c 64 0x020000

vgimport ???p ???v ???m /tmp/vg01.map /dev/vg01 /dev/dsk/c2t8d0 /dev/dsk/c2t9d0 (With ???p dry run)

vgimport ???v ???m /tmp/vg01.map /dev/vg01 /dev/dsk/c2t8d0 /dev/dsk/c2t9d0 (With out it will do it)

vgimport ???p ???v ???m /tmp/vg02.map /dev/vg02 /dev/dsk/c2t10d0 (With ???p dry run)

vgimport ???v ???m /tmp/vg02.map /dev/vg02 /dev/dsk/c2t10d0 (With out it will do it)

vgchange ???ay /dev/vg01

vgchange ???ay /dev/vg02

add Files systems to the fstab (Cut & Paste into the new fstab)

mkdir for each mount point

mount ???a

I hope this helps

Cheers

RICH