NFS and automounts and make_recovery

[Ian Cameron]

Hello Everyone,

I am finishing my DR tapes and my boss is concerned about the possible wiping out of any NFS mounts and/or automounts that were active/existed when the ignite tapes were created.

I have seen a reference to an earlier version (1.59 I think) where anything other that vg00 was erased when the recovery ran. Does anyone have multiple vg's, NFS mounts or automounts and have you recovered such a system as is or should all the fstab and automount entries be unmounted and commented out when the tape is created?

Thank you for your time,
Ian Cameron

[Victor_5]

Hi Ian:

Actually, make_recovery tape only for core OS restore, is designed to be used with standard backup tools.

The tape will includes:
1. minimal set of files and file sets required for fully functional HP-UX OS
2. very small subsets of /opt and /var
3. /etc, /stand, /sbin, /usr/lib, /usr/bin and /usr

The safest way is backup your other important datas on another seperate tape by using standare backup tools.

There are many topics related with make_recovery in this forum, just input search key word "make_recovery", I am sure those outputs can help you.

[Patrick Wallek]

When restoring from a make_recovery tape, nothing should get "wipe out". The problem with the earlier versions may have been that /etc/fstab did not get restored as from the tape and anything that was supposed to be automatically mounted wasn't in the fstab anymore and so it couldn't be mounted. When the data is restored from the tape there is no way to erase anything on an NFS filesystem because NFS is not up and running yet. Nothing should get deleted from any other local disks unless you make a mistake and change the root disk to a disk that is a part of another VG.

Does this answer your question?

[magnus linner]

I do not know about make_recovery, but if you use make_tape_recovery or make_net_recovery Ignite will hide all disk not included in VG00 during a restore.
If you in the UI try to select another root disk you do not even see disks included in other VG's. You can "force" ignite to show you all the disks by setting "Allow use of other disk" under Basic->Additiional to TRUE.

[Sarah Plunkett]

Hi Ian,

make_recovery will eventually be replaced 100% by make_tape_recovery. If you take a peek at this command's man page (make_tape_recovery)you will see that you have more options at your disposal. One of these should prove useful to you:

-x inc_cross=file|dir

Which will place onto the recovery tape that contents of that directory that you specify.

make_tape_recovery was introduced at [A|B]3.2

make_recovery will preserve the directory entries that you need for the NFS mounts in "/" and of cours /net or /tmp_mnt.

I hope this helps,
Sarah

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

Use
make_recovery -A -v -d /dev/rmt/0m
or

make_net_recovery -s igniteserver -x inc_entire=vg00

to include all of vg00

I have never had a problem with NFS being reenabled after restore.

Remember though that ignite is not a true backup solution.

Ignite is to RECOVER a non bootable system
not to backup.

For example mirror root/boot disk is not reestablished after ignite restores, because ignite is only interested in getting your system back up and running.

The only prob you'll get with NFS is when recovering/cloning a system from an ignite image make on a different host.
All vg's defined in the /etc/lvmtab will not correspond on the recovered system because device files change. (unless the h/w config is identical) .. thus the vg may not activate and thus the exported fs will not mount.

When using ignite, expect to do work after to get it up correctly.

Later,
Bill

[Ian Cameron]

Thanks to everybody for thier input.

We are using the ignite tapes in coordination with our backup system. The question I have is not what am I going to get using the ignite tapes to recover, but rather am I going to damage/erase any NFS mounted files systems (hard mounted or auomount).

Specifically, can/will ignite connect to the NFS/auto mounts then zero out (ie erase) the mounted disks/filesystems across the mount.

I really don't think it is possible (may have been in earlier ver) and especially now when I read the man for v3.2 and make_tape_recovery there are specific options available to incl/excl directories, vg's, mounts etc.

Thanks again,
Ian

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Ignite will not do anything to any NFS mountpoints when you are recovering from a make_tape_recovery tape. It can't! You don't have any networking up at the time that you are restoring stuff from the Ignite tape.