Need System Backup Procedure

[Mike Linger_2]

I have a 9000 series server under HP-UX 11.22 with no tape drives and one 36 GB hard drive. My root disk has about 2.2 GB consumed. I will never exceed 5 GB. My network consists of this server and one Win 2k pc. The network will never grow. I want to capture a bootable image of my root disk, because I like to write custom software and rebuild it into the kernel. I want create a bootable image of the root disk, temporarily store this 3-4 GB image on the same root disk, and ftp this bootable image to my windows pc. From the pc, I want to burn this bootable image on a 4.7 GB DVD. If I have to restore the system, I expect the system to be messed up enough that it wont boot at all. Will Ignite help me? Is there a better way? If I can acquire tape drives, what drives should I buy?

[Bill Hassell]

Ignite/UX is designed for a tape drive or another HP-UX system on the network to act as a network server. There is no supported method to capture a bootable image and little likelihood that a DVD can be made bootable. CDROM and DVD formats are quite complex--they are not simple disks at all.

If you have enormous amounts of spare time on your hands, you can try experimenting to see if any of this will work...or get yourself a DDS-3 or DDS-4 tape drive.

[Michael Tully]

Do yourself a favour and invest in a tape drive if you don't have another HP-UX server that you can use an ignite server. If you have another HPUX server (even without a tape drive) you could use both as ignite servers, for each other. A DDS 3 or 4 as suggested by Bill will, a DDS3 you'll find much cheaper. All you need really for the size of the system your backing up.

Once you do connect a tape drive, the best method to cut a tape is:

# /opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v -a /dev/rmt/0mn

You can download ignite from here:
http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Mike

With one disk on this server it is an accident waiting to happen - get another disk and at least mirror the OS.

Paula

[doug hosking]

Since you say 11.22 I'm guessing you have an rx2600? If so, and if your goal is solely to have a way of recovering from mistakes with your custom kernel work, it would seem far cheaper to buy yourself another internal disk than to get the necessary tape drive (probably a DDS3 or DDS4 DAT drive), SCSI cable, terminator, etc. for an external tape drive.
I assure you that those of us doing HP-UX development work have made more than one mistake during kernel development and have heavily tested the ability to boot from backup disks. :-)

Keep in mind that in most cases a problem with a custom kernel can be easily recovered from without needing to reimage the disk. You can easily override the default kernel path when booting to boot from a known good backup kernel. It just takes a little discipline to
make sure you always save a known good kernel.

Of course, there are other good reasons for doing regular backups of a system, and it may be wise to have the tape drive available for generic backup purposes in addition to emergency recovery from bad kernels. Whether you choose to do such backups to tape, another disk, over the network to your PC, or not at all depends on things only you would know about how the systems are used.

[Mike Linger_2]

It sounds line HP-UX 11.22 on an Itanium rx5670 does not like making a tape recovery:

make_tape_recovery is not supported on IPF systems.

IPF is the Itanium Processor Family. Of course I tried the command without having a tape drive, but I don't think it will work with a tape drive.

I do have the mirrordisk ux software and a second hot swapable hard drive. It looks like Ignite wasn't indended for my application. I will study the mirrordisk documentation before posting more questions. Thanks for your help.

[Brian Kinney]

I would add an additional disk over adding a tape drive. For starters, restores will be a tad faster . Secondly, you can have all kinds of mirroring to protect your information.

My favorite trick is to build my "custom kernels" on the second drive and leave my "functional kernel" on my normal drive.

That way, no matter how badly I've botched the OS, I can restart with my regular kernel from the normal disk.

When I am satisfied with my customizations, I migrate it only my standard disk drive. It's also a decent way of booting multiple OSes.

Lastly, if things go badly for you - dead disk, for instance, you *could* keep a mirror of / and /usr (depending on how you've setup the host) on this second drive. Usually, most people like to protect the data, not the OS, so I'll leave those decisions up to you.

[Alex Glennie]

fyi ...

you could use ignites make_net_recovery(1M) command to create an archive on the other system. Ignites make_tape_recovery(1M) command as you have discovered can only be used on HP PA-RISC platforms.