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backup the system
- Thread starter amalou
- Start date
KenCunningham
Technical User
We use ufsdump and ufs restore, but these might not safely restore the OS itself.
KenCunningham
Technical User
Soory, pressed submit before I finished. You might also consider jumpstart or web/flash start.
KenCunningham
Technical User
flar also seems a possibility. Try a keyword search for something like 'boot tape' in this forum for other ideas.
- Thread starter
- #5
Two things I *wish* Sun would develop for Solaris:
1) A root-style backup like mksysb for AIX. This makes the backup and reinstallation of the rootvg easy.
2) Get a good logical volume manager that is integrated into Solaris that allows for mirroring and unmirroring root disk on-the-fly, without the need to reboot. This is insane in today's OS world that Sun still requires a reboot to mirror/unmirror root, and also to boot off a CD to remove the disks from Solaris Volume Manager control. The AIX LVM is a marvel and so nice to work with. I can migrate partitions to other disks, if needed. Also, AIX has a defragfs command. As well as recreatevg and reorgvg, plus filemon and fileplace commands.
I find it amazing that more of the world isn't running AIX!
1) A root-style backup like mksysb for AIX. This makes the backup and reinstallation of the rootvg easy.
2) Get a good logical volume manager that is integrated into Solaris that allows for mirroring and unmirroring root disk on-the-fly, without the need to reboot. This is insane in today's OS world that Sun still requires a reboot to mirror/unmirror root, and also to boot off a CD to remove the disks from Solaris Volume Manager control. The AIX LVM is a marvel and so nice to work with. I can migrate partitions to other disks, if needed. Also, AIX has a defragfs command. As well as recreatevg and reorgvg, plus filemon and fileplace commands.
I find it amazing that more of the world isn't running AIX!
dd command would take forever, it will copy the OS but it copies sector for sector. If you have a second hard drive you can use ufsdump/restore for backups. You won't have to setup disk mirroring either. Flar images would work, but if you update the system you will have to create a new image. I use the second disk method for systems that I do not want to mirror or can not run Netbackup for some reason. It works great...
elgrandeperro
Technical User
That dd is very dangerous, don't even consider it.
What I have done in the past:
Figure out if everything (OS) will fit on a single tape.
Figure out which tape device writes the best density and which is the non-rewind device.
With the system quiescient (single user mode), write ufsdump images onto the non-rewind tape device with a good blocking factor. (and write the command line on the tape label).
And you are done, check the tape with the ufsrestore tf option.
gene
I've dropped UFS dumps to NFS filesystems. When I need to restore, I boot to a cdrom, configure the network adapters manually (speed/IP address/gateway/etc.), and restore my filesystems. It's not quite conventional, but it allows for easy automatic ufsdumps to filesystems.
Hey Spamly...if you have a jumpstart server you can boot off the network single user and also restore. Will bring all your stuff up for you, that is how I restore my machines if I lose everything and have to start from scratch. I use Veritas Netbackup also.
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