Upgrading 10.20 to 11.0 using alternate boot devices

[John Knapp]

I have a K570 running 10.20, Sybase v11.03, & Oracle 8.0.6 now and want to upgrade to 11.0 next. After reading several threads indicating the "update" to 11.0 is problematic versus a "cold install" to 11.0, I am now thinking I should create an alternate boot device with a cold install of 11.0.

Question: Can you foresee problems with using a 10.20 boot disk as a fall back measure if I run into (application) problems with the cold install of 11.0 on the other boot disk?

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

Hi,

No in fact you are on the right track. A cold
install is the preferable method. I've tried
on many occassions to do the upgrade, each time
resulting in failure.

When upgrading to 11, there are a few things
that you need to do in preparation.

Full system backup of your 10.20 environment.
cut two make_recovery tapes.
Have a copy of 'vgexport' in preview mode.
You can then safely load 11 on your
secondary disk using an alternate boot
device. As the VG information is already
embedded in /etc/lvmtab if you happen to go
back to 10.20, the system will just boot and
everything will be there.

HTH
-Michael

[John Knapp]

Michael ... thanks for the info ... one slight issue I have with the make_recovery tape on my K570 is the fact that we (from the start 4 years ago) boot from a Symmetrix 5500 disk array with vg00 on a mirrored set of two hypervolumes. Long time ago, HP was not 100% certain that I could restore vg00 from a make_recovery tape image from a non HP SCSI disk drive.

Since my K570 server is a production box, I would rather not find out at the last minute that I have "technical" issues with the recovery.

Any thoughts on my 4 year old concern??? :-)

[Michael Tully]

Hi John,

One suggestion with this, place a call
with both HP and EMC and let them clarify
their positions on both sides. Although
you can boot from non-internal disks each
setup is different and may not for one reason
or another. Can you move information off
any of the other internal disks to free up
space ??

-Michael

[John Knapp]

Michael ... I might be able to move some old OmniBack database files off of vg00 but I am not sure that will help me. What complicates matters more is I am going to have to migrate my K570 system & user data from the Symm 5500 over to a new Symmetrix 3930. The hypervolumes on the 5500 are 4.5GB in size and the standard hypers on the 3930 are now 11.6GBs. That in fact may be good news for me since I will gain 2.6GBs by moving to the bigger configuration.

What I could do instead of just "cloning" the root volume group disks is create a make_recovery tape from the vg00 on the Symm5500 and restore it on the new "vg00" on the Symm3930 !

I have no experience using Ignite UX for the recovery phase so I will have to read up on that .... any thoughts?

[Michael Tully]

Hi John (again),

Okay to cut make_recovery tape is rather
simple once you done it. For HP-UX 10.20
systems I use this scenario. Notice the
use of no-rewind devices in both examples)

# /opt/ignite/bin/make_recovery -ACvd /dev/rmt/0mn
(assuming your DDS drive is that internal device)

on HPUX 11, it done slightly differently.

# /opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v -a /dev/rmt/0mn

If you don't have ignite loaded, you will find it on an application CD or you can download it from
http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/download.html

-Michael

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi John:

The 'make_tape_recovery' syntax given by Michael works the *same* on 10.20 as 11.x. 'make_tape_recovery' replaces the older 'make_recovery' and is far more robust.

# make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -I -v -a /dev/rmt/0mn

The link he offers will allow you to download Ignite software and documentation. Use 'swinstall' for the installation. No reboot is necessary. Since you are capturing a 10.20 configuration, download, install and use the Ignite "A" version.

After your 11.x installation is complete, download the "B" version.

Regards!

...JRF...