Restore

[Vicki Webb]

Our system disk is failing and it is not mirrored! I do have a "make_tape_recovery" DDS tape from last month. I am running HPUX 11. How do I use this tape to restore only vg00 once the new drive is installed? I am a rookie on UNIX, so detailed instructions would be appreciated.

The system has a second internal drive, but it is not used. I have also ordered the MirrorDisk software so that there will be a mirror backup of the system disk in the future!

[Pete Randall]

Vicki,

In order to recover using your tape, you reboot the server, interrupt at the 10 second prompt, interact with IPL, do a "sea bo" to search for bootable devices and select your tape drive with the Ignite tape in it. As far as what gets restored goes, it kind of depends on how the backup was specified. I always use the -x inc_entire=vg00 option to make sure I get all of vg00 and nothing else.


Pete

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

The steps guided by Pete are complete enough to achive this. I also suggest to start installation on the spare drive inspite of waiting for the existing drive to go bad completely. Also do not discard the failed drive unless you are back normally because in worst case you may be required to get some files out of this failed disk.

HTH,
Devender

[Vicki Webb]

I have never used a recovery tape, so I have no idea what it is going to give me for options when I boot from that tape! The hardware addr of the drive being replaced is 10/0.6.0. Will it automatically restore vg00 there or will it ask me for the hardware address? I would like to restore it twice - once to the newly installed drive and a second time to the spare that is already in there, but not used (addr 10/0.5.0) Is this even an option?

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

It will not ask to you enter hardware address while loading instead it will detect hardware and will prompt you to select from the selected hardware. At this step itself you will have other options of resizing file systems etc.

HTH,
Devender

[TwoProc]

Vicki,
If you're going to use the ignite recovery method:
Since you've got a spare disk in your system, run your restore to that spare instead of your main one. This will allow you to go back to your old one. Just boot from the spare instead of your newly replaced one.

If you want another method that may be less scary for you than an ignite recovery (because you've not seen it yet). Consider the following, but once again, consider your own ability to understand and complete the steps first!
Is your whole root system fully contained on a single drive and it's the one that's failing? If so, the following may present the easiest route between point a and b.

If your disk image can be fully read you could try the following which would probably be a lot less scary than for you since you've not seen an ignite install before.

A) First see if you can fully read your root disk. Use diskinfo on the /dev/rdsk/device file to see how big it is.
"diskinfo /dev/rdsk/your_boot_drive"

B) See if it can be fully read .
"dd if=/dev/dsk/your_boot_drive of=/dev/null bs=1024k"
If the total number of blocks read looks like how many meg the disk is - you've got a good shot at this.
C) Determine the device file of the unused disk and copy the root drive to it using the dd command. Please make SURE that you absolutely KNOW which drive is your working root drive and which is your spare by their device names!!!
"dd if=/dev/dsk/your_boot_drive of=/dev/dsk/your_spare_drive bs=1024k"

Now, if the number of blocks transferred looks like the correct number of bytes for the drive size that you're using - at this point you've got a whole bootable copy of your root drive on your spare disk, and you're ready to go.

Power down the system and swap the root and spare drives.

Boot your system from the original boot path that you've always used (the default that's currently set if you've not changed this ).

If all went well - at his point you're up. Have the HP tech replace the "spare" drive and not the boot drive.

If all didn't go well - all you have to do is put back your root drive and spare where they were and reboot - you should be back where you were before you attempted all of this.

If you're not comfortable with either of these steps - then by all means contact HP and ask for them to send someone from Professional Services (contract fee) to come and do it for you. If they can't help you quickly enough, there are vendors that could do it for you. I can think of Agilisys right off hand - I'm sure others can recommend more. The point is, if you're not ready for this - don't jeapordize your company's business - get onsite help.

[Vicki Webb]

Thanks for the info. I used Ignite yesterday and all went well. Pretty straight forward. At least now I know what to expect if I ever need to use it in the future.