ADSM-L

Re: Anyone have bare metal restore instructions for SGI's???

2002-02-16 11:42:28
Subject: Re: Anyone have bare metal restore instructions for SGI's???
From: Dennis Glover <dglover1 AT BELLSOUTH DOT NET>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 10:38:05 -0600
You might be able to get away with it if you remember/know how SGIs
do their own kind of "bare metal" restore.
Check the "Backup" man page (capital "B", yes).  You do need a CD
or network server to get the miniroot installation tools loaded.  When
you have accomplished this, you'll eventually get to a menu which has
a choice called "admin".  Take this choice, and you get another menu
with the choice "sh"; take it, and if you are lucky enough to get into
a Bourne or Korn shell, do a df.  You'll see that there are filesystems
mounted at "/" and "/root".
Now, "/" is actually the mount point for your system disk's swap space,
and "/root" is the mount point for your real root partition.  (You might
have to boot into "fx" to partition the disk properly before you even
load the miniroot.)  But assume you have what SGI calls a rootdrive
partitioning scheme, that is, the disk has partitions 0 (root partition),
1 (swap partition), 8 (volume header), and 10 (entire surface).  You
might have to make a filesystem on partition 0, from the shell.
Assuming that you have enough room in the swap partition to install
the AD/TSM client, do that and configure it there.  You'll probably have to
trick up an /etc/hosts and /etc/networks file at the very least, and maybe
/etc/config/{ifconfig-x.options,netif.options} and other files so you can
get to your server.  You might have to adjust your path so you can get
to dsmc, probably at /usr/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin*.  Then, assuming you
have access to the right shared objects and libraries to support dsmc,
you ought to be able to start a restore "to a different location", to wit,
"/root" instead of "/".  That last point is absolutely key.  If you simply
execute dsmc, then type restore (and everything is working right), the
client will try to restore your entire system into the swap partition, and
you don't want to do that.
Another key point, especially if you have multiple drives:  you probably
ought to figure out a way to restore _only_ the root filespace.  Look at
the dsmc internal help (wonderful interface, that!) for restore operations;
I think it might help you with this.  You don't want to restore non-root
filespaces into the root partition, as that will only eat up space.  Once
you get the root partition restored, presumably you can exit the miniroot
and boot the system for real, then restore anything else you need to
other filespaces (disks/partitions/logical volumes, etc.).

*If you're using ADSM, the path will be /usr/adsm.

Hope that helps.

Dennis Glover
Systems Analyst/Backup Administrator
Integrated System Test Capability
Advanced Research Center
Colsa Corporation
Huntsville, Alabama
USA!