Prerequisites for creation of recovery CD

[Ralph Grothe]

Hello,

I would like to create a recovery CDROM instead of the usual DAT tape.

In the knowledge database of this site I discovered the following document which describes the procedure:

http://www4.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/search.do?category=c1s4&mode=text&searchString=burn+cd+image&searchCrit=allwords&docType=Security&docType=Patch&docType=EngineerNotes&docType=Hardware&docType=ReferenceMaterials&docType=ThirdParty

While reading the manpage of the make_net_recovery program I was wondering if a further license or piece of software was needed, because the -s switch which designates a so called "Ignite-UX server" suggests that to me.

I cannot believe this is true, since in my opinion all the steps involved in creating recovery media for any OS should be possible with the standard command/tool set of the OS and a little bit of scripting.

Regards

Ralph

[Stefan Farrelly]

Hi Ralph,

weve built a lot of ignite CD's and didnt need any extra software or license at all. The only problem we had was writing the image on a PC using Nero was we had to write it 'raw' at exactly 2048 blocksize to make it bootable, but in the end we got it all working fine.

[Ralph Grothe]

Hello Stefan,

this is good news.

I don't worry about the CD burning software since we have a Linux box in our admin shack where mkisofs and cdrecord is installed on.
I think cdrecord should be able to cope with all sorts of images.

Would you mind telling me what is needed to set up an Ignite UX server?
Can it reside on a Linux box, or is a HP-UX server required?
What software (from HP-UX application CD set) needs to be installed?

[Stefan Farrelly]

Hi Ralph,

You dont need any different software to setup an ignite server. The standard Ignite utilities includes the programs needed to run a server. We run it on an HP server - if the software is available for a Linux box then you can run it there (need to check on software.hp.com to see if they have ignite for Linux yet - I havent heard of it being available though).

Once you setup your server you need tons of diskspace for the ignite images and for this you could use a filesystem mounted from anywhere (EMC, Linux box, Win2k box etc.) as long as you can mount it on your HP server.

[Ralph Grothe]

Gulp, tons of diskspace?
I have an almost idling L2000 which is connected to a Tetragon where I have a disk share with some 5 GB left over.
The "share" is even already nfs exported to the box I want to burn the image for.
Will this suffice for a first go?
What manpage, README should I study to find out what steps to take?

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

You need space to back up all of VG00 for whatever servers your making an ignite backup of. Eg. if serverA has 5Gb used in VG00 then you will need 5Gb on your ignite server to back it up. If you have >1 server to backup you will need space for each.

The only command you need is; /opt/ignite/bin/ignite

It fires up a GUI and follow your nose. Its easy. There's a manpage for it, or more detailed stuff on docs.hp.com

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Ralph:

Current Ignite software and documentation is available here, including some white papers in the "Information Library" link. The FAQ (in section-7) offers a quick-step quide to creating a bootable CD. The 'cdwrite' LINUX tool is suggested for use therein.

http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/index.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[Ralph Grothe]

Stefan, James,

many thanks for pointing my nose towards further sources of wisdom.

Meanwhile I found on HP's docs webserver the following, which should get me star
ting:

http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/docs/sysadm.html

It is so sad that this source of information is so seldomly accessible to me as
most of the times I run into HTTP request timeouts.
HP should set up mirrors in Germany of those valuable sites!


The Ignite server doesn't look like an ad-hoc project but seems to require some
delibaration.
But you and the docs whet my appetite, and I'm convinced I will be setting up an
Ignite server sooner or later to relieve us from tape tourism.