Restore of drive containing system files

[Ira Schmidt]

The drive containing the system files of a D360 died. I replaced the drive, installed the HP UX 10.20 and patch bundle that came with the system. I restored the system from tape backup (Veritas 3.2 on NT). I did not know exactly how the LVMs were set up originally so I estimated the size of the logical volumes from the tape backup. I actually made most of the logical volumes larger than the originals. After the restore, I got the following error:
INIT: Command is respawing too rapidly. Will try again in 5 minutes. Check for possible errors.
id:cons "/usr/sbin/getty console console #system console"
I booted to single user mode and ran vgscan. I ran vgimport -a y /dev/vg00 /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 and recevied an error that the physical volume could not be imported. I was able to import the other volumes on vg01, vg02, vg03 and vg04. I tried restarting the system and still received the same error about Command is respawning too rapidly. I rebooted to single user mode and now get an error that "/etc/lvmtab could not be read into memory". I checked the lvmtab file and it is now 0 bytes.

Do I wipe the drive and start over and restore the system files without restoring the /etc/lvmtab or is there any way to recover from this problem?

[Rick Garland]

Did you restore the entire system or just the root drive?
If you did just the root drive, you can vgimport the remaining drives into the system. The data still resides on those drives.

Start with the system drive and get it going. After this is complete and working, vgimport the remaining drives. This will populate the lvmtab file with the information of the disk drives and VGs that had been created.

Once back up, use the Ignite make_recovery. It will restore the root drive without having to reload and then you can vgimport the remaining drives

[Kofi ARTHIABAH · Accepted solution]

Hi:

vgimport of vg00 will not work because the disk does NOT contain LVM information. I would suggest that you proceed as follows:

1. re-install 10.20 and patches etc. making sure that you have the sizes for the filesystems and logical volumes reasonably large.
2. restore your DATA files (ie. do not restore /dev ; /etc (unless you have specific files that you need there)
3. vgimport vg01 etc.
3. Install Ignite-UX (http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/index.html) and make a system recovery tape

Good luck.

[Thomas Schler_1]

The fact that /etc/lvmtab now is empty indicates that you should start over and do again the HPUX installation including the patches. That's a safe way.

After that do only the import of vg0[1-4], not vg00 (/etc should be on vg00!). Do not restore /etc/lvmtab. I assume that these four volume groups (vg0[1-4]) do not contain any system files like /usr, /opt, /var and so on. But if they do, do not restore them from the backup achive, because you don't need that. Just re-arrange the existing /usr, /opt, or /var on other volume groups than vg00 if you need to do so by any reason (better not).