mediainit

[Tony Watts]

I have a very simple problem, well 2 actually..
#1. I have 2 hd's in an external scsi box, I've added them to my system through sam, and no i want to mediainit them...how do I do this, cause same doesnt seem to have a util to do this, I am on ux10.10 and this is an hp9000 server with a 700/92 terminal, so its all command line...do I have to create an lv before I can or do i just type in the commands and bam! its done....
#2. I've just done a clean install on the server, mediainit the drive and got it up, but after every boot i get a mail that says I should install the support tools, well this is fine, cause i got them but they are on tape, adn when i boot with that tape it pops up to a menu and asks if I want to recover from a crash or reboot, is there a way from within the system to install these?....thanks Tony

[Printaporn_1]

Hi,

1) yes , you can do mediainit without need to create lv.
2) use swinstall point to tape device file if that tape is already depot.

[Carsten Krege]

#1 Why do you want to run mediainit on SCSI disks? I never needed it. When you add your disks through SAM it should do everything for you (putting your disks in an LVM config, putting filesystems on it etc.) without using mediainit. So, if there is not a really good reason for using mediainit, you simply won't need it.

#2 It sounds as if you are booting from the support tape??! But you should really boot from your disk and install the Online Diagnostics with swinstall from the tape.

Carsten

[Tony Watts]

thanks guys, and I hope this doesnt sound sarcastic, its not meant to be...you get an A for effort, and want to give points but not for redundency...thanks
Prinaporn,
yes i know I can do a mediainit, my question was...how...like the exact command line to execute it.....Ive tried a bunch of different string but none seem to work..
Carsten,
Yes there are many reasons to do a mediainit, bad blocks, error reading drive, put new drive in system, a refurbished drive, drive from unknown source, and just because I want i want to, to ensure I have a clean drive...
As for installing the support, I found the solution in SAM (no im not booting from tape), its in software management...but thanks for the help anyways.

[Tony Watts]

I found it...mediainit -v /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx....thanks for the help guys

[Tony Watts]

Also guys here's a small note about new disk's
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Installing a Disk
Connect disk
Create device files using mknod or SAM (or insf under HP-UX)
Format disk
SCSI preformatted but good to reformat in case more bad blocks created during shipping. Use mediainit on HP and format on SunOS.
Label and partition disk
On SunOS format also partitions disks (menu driven). HP-UX had only one partition and swap partition. Later versions permitted software striping. HP-UX 10.XX has logical volume manager.
Hints for partitions:
Make a backup root partition on second disk
Increase swap space with memory - 2 to 4 times memory
Split (stripe) swap space across disks
Make partitions smaller than backup device capacity
Create separate partitions for files that are likely to go out of control (/tmp, /usr/tmp, /var if used for logging, news)
Create UNIX filesystems on partitions
Use mkfs or newfs, which is a user friendly front end. Now usually can just do newfs partition.
Verify filesystems
Setup automatic mounting at boot time
This is done using a file which gives the partitions and mount points. This is /etc/fstab under SunOS and HP-UX 10.X and /etc/checklist under HP-UX 9.XX, and vftab under Solaris. The third field gives the filesystem type: nfs for nfs mounted files, local files differ with vendor (ufs, 4.2 under SunOS, hfs under HP-UX). The fourth gives mount options. The sixth specifies the fsck pass. The fifth is a dump frequency which is mostly unused.
/etc/fstab is read by mount, umount, swapon, and fsck commands. One can call mount with just the mount point name :

mount /usr/local

mount -a mounts all the filesystems listed in /etc/fstab. It is called at boot time. Note that it will read the file sequentially so filesystems must appear in the correct order of mounting.
Setting up swapping /etc/fstab file.

[Tony Watts]

And I thought I would give you each 5 points for your effort...thanks