/usr directory deleted how to recover.

[Mubarak Rebhan]

One of our admins has accidentally deleted the /usr directory:
(1) How can we recover from this situation specially that we can not logon to the system??
(2) What are possible impacts on our SAP application on the system??

Please help.

[harry d brown jr]

TAPE backup is the ONLY way!


live free or die
harry

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

You need to HALT your machine immediately.

Get your recovery tapes out.

Boot into single user mode.

restore /usr if possible, otherwise recover root.

Impact to SAP will be that it won't be running for a few hours, like at least FOUR!!!

live free or die
harry

[Trond Haugen]

In adittion to what Harry expleined; If you can't log on and don't have a have a shell you can do su from your only option is to hit the switch. In which case I guess you will not be able to gracefully halt SAP. :-(

Regards,
Trond

[Dirk Wiedemann]

Hello

afaik: without /usr/lib you nearly can't do anything. Even simple commands like cp, ln, mv or so need the libs in /usr. I'm not sure about the possibility, to restart your system in single user mode.
If nothing else possibel:
- boot your system from the last ignite-tape, interrupt the automated recover process and interactivly recover only the lvol with the /usr directory. After that you should be able to boot your system.
- if you haven't an ignite tape: boot your system from the Support Plus cdrom, do not interact with IPL and select "Run a recovery shell".

good luck

[harry d brown jr]

Fortunately a lot of commands have STATICALLY linked commands in /sbin, so you don't really need /usr to recover


live free or die
harry

[Dirk Wiedemann]

hello harry,

that was my estimation, too. But a time ago i wanted to move the /usr/lib to another lv and create a link. So I have moved /usr/lib to /usr/lib.bak and than died. I couldn't do absolutly nothing, always errormessage to /usr/lib/dld.sl.
My PATH-variable for root looks always first in /sbin and so i have thought the static-linked commands must work.

What's my mistake?

thanks, Dirk

[pap]

Hi,
You can do following.

1. boot the system in single user mode.
2. restore the /usr directory from backup.

If your running system is on the network, just copy /usr from any other similar HP server temporarily and try to recover the /usr from backup. You can restore /usr directory from other server using rcp.

Hope this helps as rcp resides in /bin.

-pap

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi

DO u have ignite , the amy be you can just run ercovery from there or reload the OS , this if is recent thne wont impact anything.


Manoj Srivastava

[Mubarak Rebhan]

We do have ignite and we are using that to recover. I will update you with thre results.

Thanks to all of you.

[Pete Randall]

When you're done recovering, I've got a pair of cast iron mittens you can borrow for the admin that deleted /usr. Let me know if you'd like to borrow them - they really slow down typing to the point where he can think about what he's doing before he does it.

Pete