Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Red Hat 7.3 and ext3 file systems

2002-10-16 16:51:54
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Red Hat 7.3 and ext3 file systems
From: jon_bousselot AT sd.vrtx DOT com (Jon Bousselot)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 13:51:54 -0700
While it's not officially supported, I did manage to get it to work.
I have a Redhat 8 system on a Dell desktop PC with an Antares dual channel
LVD-160 scsi card, and an adaptec card.
P3-500 with 384MB RAM and a 8G hard disk formatted with EXT3, with a root and
/boot for partitions.  Really simple.

The Antares card uses the sym53c8xx kernel module, which is not what I expected
when I built the system.  We originally used the antares card in the sun system
to split our AIT-2 drives onto separate channels and increase tape write speed.
It works in a variety of systems, and was our only option for dual LVD scsi in
our sun system at the time.

Redhat 7.3 didn't find the antares card like I had expected, and since RH8 was
recently released, I thought I'd give it a try.  8 has all the drivers for all
my hardware, and since I was installing fresh, the installer found all four
AIT-2 drives and the Qualstar robot just fine.  The other scsi card is an
adaptec.  Here is an output from lspci.  See how the LSI Symbios card (Antares)
has a different chip number than the kernel module it uses.  A bit confusing,
but I think most people will be using more common hardware in their deployment.

00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c985 1000BaseSX (SX/TX) (rev 01)
00:0f.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1010 66MHz  Ultra3
SCSI Adapter (rev 01)
00:0f.1 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1010 66MHz  Ultra3
SCSI Adapter (rev 01)
00:11.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940UW Pro / AIC-788x (rev 01)

The install script is looking for two key things that are not present in RH8.  I
found them by trial and error, and resolved them quickly.
/etc/redhat-release needs the version number changed from 8.0 to 7.0.  The
release name doesn't matter.
Red Hat Linux release 7.0 (Psyche)

And the version of ncurses that ships with RH8 is ncurses-5.2-28.  The installer
is expecting 4.x, so we need to make a link.
Make a soft link from /usr/lib/libncurses.so.4 -> libncurses.so.5
libncurses.so.5 should already be a link to libncurses.so

During the install, the release nubmer is checked immediately.  The ncurses
error may appear, but since you made the symlink, all the function provided by
ncurses is satisfied, and the install will finish.  The license depends on
ncurses to work properly.  Without the link, the license step will fail without
any messages.  I looked at the script, and saw which command it was actually
running, and when you try this by itself, you can see the error messages about
not being able to find /usr/lib/libncurses.so.4

If your install has not already included the st and sg modules, you'll need to
add them to a startup script.  I put mine in /etc/rc3.d/S99local
modprobe sg
modprobe st
Since netbackup starts at S77, I'll have to watch more closely and see if
anything complains during the reboot.  I might have to move the kernel modules
into the S77netbackup script.

In the documentation that gets copied to your disk during the install, it
explains a little more about their function.
/usr/openv/netbackup/MediaMgr_DeviceConfig_Guide.txt explains all the details.
The doc tells you to use insmod for inserting kernel modules.  I've found insmod
or modprobe to be effective.

To configure the tapes and robot, follow the instructions in the text file.  It
was very simple from this point on.

My linux server is a media server.  The master server is an E280.  I am using
this linux box to read and duplicate our old AIT-2 tapes onto LTO as we will
eventually discontinue our use of  AIT.
It's a slow process, but since the AIT library is not used for backups any more,
we can take our time doing the duplications.  Linux has a utility called iostat
(on the 3rd CD), but I haven't figured out how to see tape KB/sec speeds yet. I
was able to rebuild the catalog from 4 tapes at once on this system.  It was
definately maxed out, but it seems to get the job done.

The underlying filesystem doesn't seem to matter much to Netbackup.  I'm not
doing any kind of low level backup or restore, and since this is not a master
server, I don't see a performance hit by having a journal running on the same
mount as my catalog.  Since EXT3 worked, I believe reiserfs should work also.

The veritas website does not support RH8, so don't expect any help from them if
you see bugs.
-Jon

Mike Andres wrote:

> Jon, I did find out that SSO is not supported on any Linux, haven't verified
> the 7.3 although it sounds like you are running version 8?  I would be
> interested in the steps you have.
>
> TIA,
> -mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Bousselot [mailto:jon_bousselot AT sd.vrtx DOT com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 4:50 PM
> To: Mike Andres
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Red Hat 7.3 and ext3 file systems
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> Did you ever find an answer to this question?  I've got steps for NBU 4.5 on
> Redhat 8 using EXT3 as a media server if you are interested.
>
> -Jon Bousselot
>
> Mike Andres wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know if Red Hat 7.3 is supported as a Master/Media server?
> Are
> > ext3 file systems supported under NBU?  Is SSO supported for a Red Hat
> Media
> > server?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -mike



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