New install of os on internal disks but keep old vg on external disks

[Rocky Lavoie_1]

Hi all,
I'm planning on pulling my internal mirrored vg00 disks and replacing them with larger ones. On the new disks, I'm doing a cold install of 11.i on my rp5450. Is there a way to do the install on the new disks, then have the system recognise the existing vg01, vg02, and vg03 located on my external FC drives? Trying to save a little time and not restore vg01-2-3 from tape.
Thanks,
Rocky

[Geoff Wild · Accepted solution]

Yes, create map files of those vg's, (vgexport -s -v -p -m /tmp/vg01.map /dev/vg01), save them on another server or tape, then vgimport them.

Save a copy of your fstab file as well.

Rgds...Geoff

[Joy Orton]

Keep in mind the Device ID's may change.
ie... c4t2d0 may become c2t4d0...

vgscan can be your friend.
check the man page.

[venugopalakrishna.y.r]

device id's cannot change if the card's instance is not disturbed and same scsi target id is used for the disk device.

venu

[Bharat Katkar]

Rocky,
Create MAP files as suggested by geoff and that should work fine for you.
Keep your map files safe or back it up to another system. More importantly you should note down the group no. of the Volume Groups.

# ls -al /dev/vgxx/group

Note down the Minor numbers and keep them safe.

Once you are done with the installation, do following say for VG01:

copy back the map files.
# mkdir /dev/vg01
# mknod /dev/vg01/group c 64
# vgimport -v -m /dev/vg01

see vgimport for correct options.

Repeat it for all VG's

All the best.
Regards,