is ignite patch needed?

[Dave Chamberlin]

The ignite download site indicates that the latest cumulative pax patch should be installed to use ignite, referencing the make archive facilty of ignite. Since I only intend to use ignite for making a recovery tape, can I safely ignore that patch? Also, how can I test my recovery tape? I don't have a server that I can afford to mess up. Thanks.

[Carol Garrett]

Yes, if you want an ignite recovery tape you can rely on you must use the latest pax patch. I believe the latest is PHCO_20416 which is included in the September 2000 GR patch bundle. So if youre installing the quarterly GR patch bundles from HP regularly then you should already have this patch installed. If not, install the GR bundle (you should be doing this) or the individual latest pax patch.

[Victor BERRIDGE · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave,
I would install the patch just to be sure (my opinion...), now to test well the best is to live dangerously: use it!
Ive done this saturday...
In single user, choose to boot from your DAT or whatever, interract=>No, at a point you will see a
Welcome to Ignite Ux...
Press enter to stop batch install
a menu display appears
[ Install HPUX ]
[Run a recovery shell]

Reboot

Choose reboot et voila
you tested that you can install from your tape
Now on the forum there have been discussions on how to see the content of the tapes...

Good luck
Best of all
Victor

[Frederic Soriano]

PAX is a tool make_recovery uses. So I suggest you to install it.

Regarding your second question, I am afraid that there is no other way than trying it on a server.

I once issued a make_recovery on a B180L workstation, and restored it successfully on a B2000: 'insf' automagically creates right special files, depending on the architecture it is running on. So if you have an alternate server which closely matches your actual one, you can have a good preview of what would happen if you had to boot on your ignite'd tape.

Regards.

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi Dave,

I would highly recommend to install the latest cumulative pax patch.

If you installed the GR Bundle of last september, it should already be installed. If not, then you may choose to live dangerously.
If I were you, I wouldn't take any risk regarding a recovery_tape creation, it could turn to a nightmare....

As far as I know, the only way to fully test your tape is to reinstall a system with it. Try to find a server matching closely the one on which you created the tape. The right device files should be created automatically.

Best regards,

Dan

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

Dave:

Yes you need the patch for reliable ignite tapes (and for large files) I tried to wing it on one of my servers and it did not work - I had to install the patch and bingo...

If you do not want to boot with the ignite tape, you can create it using make_recovery -AvC and test it with check_recovery to test the tape.

Checkout : http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B3920-90073/00/00/24-con.html

good luck

[jherring]

just to add to this. yes the Pax patch is required. make_recovery uses pax and requires the new version to work properly.

As for testing you can use the preview mode and the check_recovery but the only way to be sure is to put it to the test and restore the system using the tape just like you would have to do in a disaster. if you never fully test the tape then you can not be sure you did not make a mistake or that the tape is not bad etc... Better to test it now then to not have it in a disaster.

Best Practice: Always make 2 make_recovery tapes. maybe you only redo one oncea week and the other every night or whatever your DRP calls for but having 2 is much better in case one tape is faulty or something of that nature.

Jon