Re: Solaris system recovery

Gavin Ring/AALC/AlcatelAustralia wrote:

> Has anyone encountered a problem when trying  to recover the /usr
> partition on a Sun box running Solaris 2.4.
>
> We have found that there are 2 files in /usr/lib that are open at the
> time of the recovery.
>
> 1. /usr/lib/libc.so.1
> 2. /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1
>
> The system is then inoperable and unable to boot.

As far as I know, ADSM is not suitable for backup of /, /usr, /var and
/opt on a Solaris system, because these fileystems are system-relative
filesystems.

However, here is some clues that may help you.  Boot from the CD-ROM,
using the Solaris 2.4 installation CD (type "boot cdrom" at the boot
monitor prompt).

After several minutes, OpenWindows is auto-started, and a message saying
that you're going to install Solaris is printed on the screen.  DO NOT
CLICK ON OK !!!!

Put that window in the iconifed status, so you won't click on OK
anyway.  Click on the third button of the mouse while in the root window
(colored in blue, I think), and select "Command Tool".

In that Command Tool, you see the # prompt.  At that point, you're the
root user on a quite-full Solaris 2.4 system, located on the CD-ROM.

You can mount the /usr disk partition (I assume that /usr is a separate
filesystem) into /mnt, using the command
   mount /dev/dsk/c*t*d*s* /mnt    (replace * by appropriate numbers)
then you can copy the missing files from the CD to your disk, using
   cp -p /usr/lib/libc.so.1 /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1 /mnt/lib
Then, unmount the disk partition
   umount /mnt
and enter
   init 0
in order to shutdown the system.  Now, try to boot again the host on the
disk (type "boot" at the boot monitor prompt).

If your host still does not boot, it is likely that your system is more
damaged than you thought. In that case, I hope that you have level-0
"ufsdump" backups and a local tape drive ready to be used. You can
proceed as follows. Connect your tape drive to the host, and boot from
the CD ROM. [...] At the # prompt, use the newfs command in order to
rebuilt empty filesystems (for each Solaris-relative filesystem, for
example /, /usr, /var and /opt):
   newfs /dev/rdsk/c*t*d*s*   (replace * by appropriate numbers)
You must then put a boot sector on the / partition
   installboot /usr/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c*t*d*s*
(replace * by appropriate numbers).
Then you can restore each filesystem from your level-0 "ufsdump" backups
by performing the following operations for each filesystem:
  1) Mount the fileystem into /mnt:
     mount /dev/dsk/c*t*d*s* /mnt   (replace * by appropriate numbers)
  2) Verify that the filesystem is empty:
     ls -al /mnt
     (you should only see the "lost+found" directory)
  3) Put the tape head to the appropriate backup file:
     mt -f /dev/rmt/*n rewind   (replace * by appropriate numbers)
     mt -f /dev/rmt/*n fsf *    (replace * by appropriate numbers)
  4) Restore the filesystem
     ufsrestore rxvf /dev/rmt/*n
  5) Unmount the filesystem
     umount /mnt
Then halt the system using init 0.

You should be able to reboot, now.


Hope this helps,


Alain