Recommendation for reinstalling 11.0 on C360 w/out CD-ROM

[Matt Harrell]

I am going to be reinstalling HP-UX 11.0 on a C360 workstation. I want to completely rearrange the volume groups, file systems, mirroring, etc., and replace two full-height 18.2 GB disks with 4 36.4 GB half-height disks.

This workstation does not have a CD-ROM. I'm considering attaching an external SCSI 4X CD-ROM drive that we've used for some of the HP-UX workstations before (but never for an OS install). We also have HP-UX servers that have CD-ROM drives that are NFS-shared.

I'm not sure what the best way is going to be to install 11.0 from scratch. Will I be able to boot from the external CD-ROM drive?

If there's a way to do an install via an NFS mounted CD-ROM drive, it seems this would be the better way to go. It's a 100 Mbps network, which will be much faster than a 4X CD-ROM.

Or, maybe we should just buy a new SCSI CD-ROM. I think there's even a place to mount it internally.

What is the best approach? If I can use the NFS mounted CD-ROM, how do I go about doing this? Can it be mounted from a cold boot/install, or do I run an install command from the C360?

[Mark Grant]

If I'm reading this right, you could do a "make_tape_recovery" beforehand and install off the tape. When it boots it will let you re-arrange everything.

[Iqbal Malik]

Matt

Do you have access to a DDS drive and a make_recovery_tape?

If so this is the best way to do your installation.

If not a cold install will do but takes longer.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You should be able to use an external SCSI CD-ROM --- if the firmware will recognize it. Go ahead and connect it but make absolutely certain that you are connecting like SCSI to like SCSI (e.g. SE-SCSI to SE-SCSI). Do not connect HVD (Hi-voltage differential) SCSI to anything except other HVD SCSI devices. You are not going to be able to install via NFS mounts because the OS would not yet have NFS or networks.

Now, you could do all of this, including, rearranging disks and filesystems and boot from the network if you do an Ignite make_net_recovery.

[Matt Harrell]

The system has a DDS4 tape drive. I'll have to do a search to get more information on how make_recovery_tape works. Is this optional software? It's not currently on the system. Also, will it allow me to completely change the way the root mirrored pair disks are arranged (different file systems, larger swap)?

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Matt,

Make_tape_recovery is part of Ignite-Ux which you can download for free from here:

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

The idea is you run "make_tape_recovery -a /dev/rmt/0mn -I -v -x inc_entire=vg00" to give you a bootable tape image of your root volume. You then boot off the tape and go through the typical SD install type interface which will allow you to re-configure your lvols/filesystems, etc.


Pete

[Matt Harrell]

Excellent! Thank you all for your help. Now, I have one more question. If I use make_tape_recovery, what will happen when the system finds that two 18 GB disks have been replaced with four 36 GB disks? Will this cause problems?

[Steven E. Protter]

If you really like work, on another machine you can set up an Ignite Golden Image server.

Then you can use make_sys_image to create an image and boot off the internal NIC to get the image.

Under these circumstances you would not even need a cd-rom.

In terms of time a cd-rom is cheaper. Ignite server setup would enhance your Disaster Recovery and flexibility with regards to OS upgrades and such.

SEP

[Mark Grant]

Matt,

It won't matter that you've changed disks and you will be able to adjust the sizes of the LV's if you want to when you install.