vdump restore to HPUX?

[Matt Hearn]

This may seem like a silly question, but our customer has made a backup of a database on a Tru64 system, and wants to restore it on an HPUX box. They used something called "vdump," which I understand is a native Tru64 app. Ignoring for the moment that I don't see how Tru64 binaries will work on an rx6600 running 11.23, how can I get this data off the tapes onto HPUX? Is it even possible?

Thanks!

[Matt Hearn]

Oh, a side note that may be of importance: because the tapes in question are DLT, and because the only DLT7000 drive I have is FWD, I have had to attach it to an rp7410 running 11.11, and will be NFS mounting filesystems from the rx6600 to the rp7410 and restoring to them that way.

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

Matt,

I'm afraid you are SOL.

vdump is a tool to backup Tru64 AdVFS filesets ('mount points').
vrestore would be its counterpart.

I would recommend recovering / restoring / renting a Tru64 system to restore the tape and make the files available on an NFS mountpoint.

However.. you might not be there yet.
If it contains 'a database', as in a copy of the raw files which comprise a database, you may still be SOL, as the binary DB files are unlikely to be acceptable under HPUX.

So you may have to activate the DB software (Oracle?) to create a cross-platform EXPORT of the relevant data.

Tru64 engineering recognized the potential desirability for a tool to read vdump tapes, but I do not think anythign actually happened. ( 2002: http://mailgate.dada.net/comp/comp.sys.hp.hpux/msg26859.html )

The public 'transition' documents I found do not address vdump tapes specifically, but mention alternatives. For example see:

http://h30097.www3.hp.com/pdf/v5_system_admin_and_mgt.pdf

You may want to dive into the full transition information at:

http://h30097.www3.hp.com/transition/
and
http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/324919-0-0-0-121.html

Contact me offline if you are serious about persueing this problem and need help.

Hope this helps some,
Hein van den Heuvel (at gmail dot com)
HvdH Performance Consulting