Make recovery questions

[Chris Fadrowski]

Did a make_recovery on a test system and then restored using the procedure. However, items in /usr and /opt where missing. They were all on vg00. Just what does make_recovery do and why were these files not there. I was unable to use bdf and other OS level commands. Had to restore them from the Make_recovery tape. I would have thought they would be put back there automatically.
what gives???

[Patrick Wallek]

What options to make_recovery did you use? If you just did a make_recovery with no options then not everything in vg00 gets backed up, only a very select set of files. If you do a 'make_recovery -A' then everything will get backed up. Judging from the man page, some of /usr should have been backed up. Don't know why it wasn't.

Do a 'man make_recovery' more info, but here are selected entries from the man page:

make_recovery(1M) make_recovery(1M)

NAME
make_recovery - creates a System Recovery Tape

-A Specifies that the entire root disk/volume group
is to be included in the System Recovery tape.
This creates a complete bootable backup of the
disk or volume group.

In the case of large root disks or volume groups,
or when other utilities are used for normal
backups, this option should not be used. Instead,
the default minimum core OS should be backed up,
to recover a minimum system, and then the full
recovery should be done from the backups.

make_recovery

Without specifying the -A option, the resulting archive will
consist of the following Core-OS files and directories:

/.profile, /.rhosts,
/dev, /etc, /sbin,

/usr/bin, /usr/sbin,
/usr/lib, /usr/obam,
/usr/sam, /usr/share,
/usr/ccs, /usr/conf,
/usr/lbin, /usr/contrib,
/usr/local, /usr/newconfig

/var/adm/sw/security, /var/opt/ignite/local/manifest,
/var/adm/sw/products, /var/adm/sw/save,
/var/adm/sw/sessions/swconfig.last,
/var/adm/sw/sessions/swmodify.last,
/var/adm/sw/sessions/swlist.last,
/var/adm/sw/swconfig.log,
/var/adm/sw/getdate.templ,
/var/adm/sw/defaults.patchfilters,
/var/adm/sw/ui/preferences, /var/adm/sw/targets,
/var/adm/sw/software, /var/adm/sbtab,
/var/opt/ignite/recovery,
/var/adm/cron, /var/spool/cron,
/opt/ignite/bin/print_manifest,
/opt/ignite/share/man/man1m.Z/print_manifest.1m,
/opt/upgrade, /opt/dce

To add other files from the root volume group to the archive,
edit the /var/opt/ignite/recovery/makrec.append file before
invoking make_recovery.

With the -A option specified, all of the root volume group is
archived.

If /usr is not on the root volume group, then the entire volume
group on which /usr resides is also archived. This is because of core files needed from the /usr directory.

END man page excerpts

[Chris Fadrowski]

i forgot to mention, i did a make_recovery -A. /usr is in vg00 and so was /opt

[Patrick Wallek]

So you DID do a make_recovery -A!?! Hmmmm...... The ignite installation did complete successfully? After the installation rebooted the machine automatically you didn't interrupt the boot and come up in single-user mode did you? If you did that would explain it since nothing is mounted when you come up in single-user mode. If not.... Hmmmm.......

Can you see the contents of /usr on the tar archive portion of the tape? The stuff is on there isn't it? Just for grins you might try 'mt -t /dev/rmt/?mn fsf 1' and then 'tar -tvf /dev/rmt/?mn /usr/some_file_name' and see if it is there.

I've done several make_recovery's and recovered from them and I the only time I have seen a problem is when I was using a tape that was too short and wouldn't hold everything. I have the job automated in such a way that I never saw the error messages, I just assumed that the tape was created successfully. When I tried to recover from that tape later in the week, I discovered that /usr and /var weren't there because they didn't fit on the tape. Depending on the size of vg00 you may want to make sure that everything is actually fitting on the tape. If you do the make_recovery interactively then pax will prompt for a new tape if/when it reaches the end of the one it is working on.

[Sarah Plunkett]

Was the system quiet at the time when the recovery tape was created ? What can you see in the makrec.log ? Are there any errors in there ?

[Chris Fadrowski]

i checked all that. i am going to try and run a new Make recovery -A and try it out. BUT, will make recovery restore all my vg01, vg02 volumes as well or do i have to do a vgcfgrestore and the activate it to get that info back??????

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Since you are reinstalling from tape onto the same system that the make_recovery was run on, you should NOT have to do anything to get all of your VG information back. All of that should get restored automatically and the VGs should be activated when the machine does the automatic reboot.

The machine should actually reboot twice, I believe. The first time it should do some device set up and then after the second reboot your system should be ready to go with all VGs activated and all LVs mounted appropriately.

However, just to be on the safe side, I would do a:
'vgexport -m mapfile -s -v -p vg-name' and save the info to a tape or ftp it to your PC or something so you can get to it after you rebuild the machine.