You see, I have these tapes...

[disaster]

I'm a bit of a newbie with Networker and have been tasked to recover some files from an old set of backup tapes from years ago and a server far far away. I've been able to get Networker installed and have been able to index the tapes and navigate to the needed files on the way to recover them, but it seems I need to recover the media indexes. And it seems to identify those media indexes on the tape, but I can't for the life of me get them to be recovered.

Is there some better documentation out there for disaster recovery? I have no confidence I'm running the right commands at this point from the man pages and other bits of reference I've dragged up. I wonder if the media index(es) I see are current/complete/good - how would I know?

And if for some reason I can't recover the media indexes, is there a way to just get the files off these particular tapes? I can see them there, tantalizing me with their nearness.

Thanks in advance for any clues you can give me on this one...

 

[cheffern]

well...from my last DR test a few years ago - I had the steps as follows for a Solaris server.
mind you - this requires the bootstrap but maybe it will help...

1) Restore the media databases from tape backup.

Load the tape into one of the drives and Mount it using the NetWorker GUI.
Make note of the drive name that it was mounted into.

Use the mmrecov command to recover the NetWorker server’s bootstrap (media database and resource configuration files).

# mmrecov -v

2) Because the configuration files cannot be reliably overwritten while NetWorker is running, mmrecov recovered the res directory as res.R by default.

Shutdown the NetWorker processes:
# nsr_shutdown

Rename the existing /nsr/res directory to /nsr/res.orig:
# mv res res.orig

Rename the recovered /nsr/res.R directory to /nsr/res:
# mv res.R res

Start the NetWorker daemons:
# /etc/init.d/networker start (add -'s server_name' to make it faster)

Reboot server via init 6, and verify the following:
# reboot

3) Recover the index. Normally just using nsrck -L7 will do it -

but if just doing nsrck -L7 does not appear to work, run ‘nsrck’ and then ‘scanner’ as follows:

# nsrck –L6 client_name

Mount the tape(s) that contain the data for client_name and run the ‘scanner’ command on it to make the data available to the server:

# scanner –im /dev/rmt/#mbn

I hope that will help you...
good luck!
-Chef.

 

[disaster]

So I think I got the media indexes in, and if I try to recover it asks for the tape in nsrwatch... I have it in the drive, but it keeps cycling through. Could it be it doesn't want to deal with a write-protected tape even though I'm only recovering?

Device type volume
/dev/rmt/1ubn 8mm 5GB DS1-076 verifying label, moving backward 2 file(s)



Sessions:
target:root browsing
oldserver:/file/system (5/17/08) starting read of 653 MB





Messages:
Thu 11:15:29 PM /dev/rmt/1ubn mounted 8mm 5GB tape DS1-076 (write protected)
Thu 11:15:29 PM media info event: 8mm tape DS1-076 will be needed
Thu 11:15:43 PM media event cleared: confirmed mount of DS1-076 on /dev/rmt/1ubn
Thu 11:15:44 PM /dev/rmt/1ubn mounted 8mm 5GB tape DS1-076 (write protected)
Thu 11:15:44 PM media info event: 8mm tape DS1-076 will be needed
Thu 11:15:59 PM media event cleared: confirmed mount of DS1-076 on /dev/rmt/1ubn
Thu 11:15:59 PM /dev/rmt/1ubn mounted 8mm 5GB tape DS1-076 (write protected)
Thu 11:15:59 PM media info event: 8mm tape DS1-076 will be needed
Thu 11:16:14 PM media event cleared: confirmed mount of DS1-076 on /dev/rmt/1ubn
Thu 11:16:15 PM /dev/rmt/1ubn mounted 8mm 5GB tape DS1-076 (write protected)
Thu 11:16:15 PM media info event: 8mm tape DS1-076 will be needed
Thu 11:16:30 PM media event cleared: confirmed mount of DS1-076 on /dev/rmt/1ubn
Thu 11:16:30 PM /dev/rmt/1ubn mounted 8mm 5GB tape DS1-076 (write protected)
Thu 11:16:30 PM media info event: 8mm tape DS1-076 will be needed

Pending:
Thu 11:16:30 PM media info: 8mm tape DS1-076 will be needed