Reinstalling root filesystem only in SCO OpenServer 6.0.0
Alberto Rodriguez
Let's assume the next situation:
SCO OSR 6.0.0 + patches installed in a hard drive with root, stand, u,
u2, u3, ... filesystems on it.
Filesystem root gets corrupted and it is to necessary reinstall it.
Please, can anybody tell me how can I reinstall the root filesystem
leaving untouched the other filesystems?
This is a clear option when installing OSR 5.0.x, but I've not been
able to locate this option in OSR 6.0.0
Many thanks in advance. Best regards,
--
Alberto Rodriguez Rodriguez
alberto__@__unilogic.es
Jean-Pierre Radley
| Hi all,
|
| Let's assume the next situation:
|
| SCO OSR 6.0.0 + patches installed in a hard drive with root, stand, u,
| u2, u3, ... filesystems on it.
|
| Filesystem root gets corrupted and it is to necessary reinstall it.
|
| Please, can anybody tell me how can I reinstall the root filesystem
| leaving untouched the other filesystems?
|
| This is a clear option when installing OSR 5.0.x, but I've not been
| able to locate this option in OSR 6.0.0
|
| Many thanks in advance. Best regards,
I always insisted on separate filesystems under OSR 5, but since
reinstalling only the root filesystem seems impossible on OSR 6, I
stopped making separate filesystems altogether.
--
JP
Alberto Rodriguez
> Alberto Rodriguez typed (on Sat, Mar 06, 2010 at 01:17:49PM -0800):
> | Hi all,
> |
> | Let's assume the next situation:
> |
> | SCO OSR 6.0.0 + patches installed in a hard drive with root, stand, u,
> | u2, u3, ... filesystems on it.
> |
> | Filesystem root gets corrupted and it is to necessary reinstall it.
> |
> | Please, can anybody tell me how can I reinstall the root filesystem
> | leaving untouched the other filesystems?
> |
> | This is a clear option when installing OSR 5.0.x, but I've not been
> | able to locate this option in OSR 6.0.0
> |
> | Many thanks in advance. Best regards,
>
>
>
> JP
Jean-Pierre,
Thank you for your answer.
Is it **really** impossible to reinstall filsystem root only?. When
installing OSR6, there is an advice stating that you can preserve
filesystem's layout in some point afterward. This is the option I
can't find.
Kind regards,
Jean-Pierre Radley
I cannnot remember seeing that advice. Can you be more precise in
quoting it?
--
JP
Alberto Rodriguez
Hi Jean-Pierre,
My apologies for the long delay to answer. Very busy these weeks...
When the installation procedure arrives to the window "Preparing your
disk and choosing software", I press F1 help key on the option "Hard
disk/Filesystem setup:", and the third paragraph states:
"The 'Customize partitions & filesystems' option allows to create or
change partitions and filesystems. Any existing partitions and data
can be optionally preserved, if an unused partition with sufficient
space is available for installation"
This is the cause I suppose that **may** exist a procedure to keep
aditional filesystems untouched when reinstalling.
Any idea?
Many thanks and greetings from Spain.
Jean-Pierre Radley
I don't remember that, but I assume you are correct.
But anyhow, I still cannot tell you how to actually accomplish that.
Try reposting the problem in Legend mailing list.
--
JP
Alberto Rodriguez
"Legend mailing list"... I don't know that site. Please, what's the
URL?
Scot Jenkins
> | Hi all,
> |
> | Let's assume the next situation:
> |
> | SCO OSR 6.0.0 + patches installed in a hard drive with root, stand, u,
> | u2, u3, ... filesystems on it.
> |
> | Filesystem root gets corrupted and it is to necessary reinstall it.
> |
> | Please, can anybody tell me how can I reinstall the root filesystem
> | leaving untouched the other filesystems?
> |
> | This is a clear option when installing OSR 5.0.x, but I've not been
> | able to locate this option in OSR 6.0.0
If you had a backup prior to the corruption, you should just be able to
restore from it. However, re-creating root is non-trivial as SCO has
made this difficult to prevent cloning of systems, which would violate
your license.
What follows is my experience with UnixWare 7.1.4 but the general
concept *may* work on OpenServer 6. I've only installed OpenServer once
but the process seemed simliar enough to UnixWare that this might work
on OpenServer too.
My setup: a PC with two hard drives and a tape drive.
* boot drive: 40 GB UnixWare 7.1.4 OS
/, swap, /home, /usr/local, /opt ...
all important data lives on this drive
* data drive: 160 GB
backups are written here
miscellaneous work area
Each night I run a full cpio(1) backup of each filesystem on the boot
drive onto the data drive. An entire full backup takes about 5 minutes
so I don't bother with partials. Once/wk the backup files are written
to a tape. If the boot drive fails, I can restore quickly from backups
on the data drive. If both drives fail, I restore from tape.
My boot disk was making a clunking noise so I ordered a new drive and
created an Emergency recovery tape in single user mode. I physically
replaced the boot drive with a similar sized drive (both old and new
were 40 GB). Unfortunately the drives were just different enough and
the Emergency recovery tape complained the new drive was *smaller* than
the old one, so the tape was useless and a waste of the two hours to
create it.
I found SCO TA# 111843 [1] and followed "OPTION 3: USING THE BOOT MEDIA
WITH A BLANK INSTALLATION" to set up the new disk, partitioning,
slicing, and formatting empty filesystems. Once you have a clean disk
you can boot from the install media again, switch to VT0 (ctrl-alt-esc),
mount the boot and data drives and restore filesystems from the backups.
You also have to chroot into '/' (the new root that you are restoring)
and write the boot code to the disk via:
NOTE: OpenServer commands might be different!
mount the new '/' at /mnt; mount /stand at /mnt/stand
# chroot /mnt /bin/sh
# /usr/sbin/disksetup -B -b /etc/boot /dev/rdsk/c0b0t0d0s0
# exit
# cd /
# sync; sync; sync
# sh_umount /mnt/stand
# sh_umount /mnt
CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot
This worked well and I only had a few minor issues (/tmp and /var/tmp
were missing, a few others...) but these were discussed in SCO TA#
125718 [2]. I was able to rebuild by boot drive in about three hours,
which I thought was pretty good considering this was my first attempt.
Obviously, you should always have known good backups before attempting
anything like this. Also, I restored the entire boot drive, not just
root (/) but maybe this gives you some ideas to try.
Hope this helps.
scot
[1] http://wdb1.sco.com/kb/showta?taid=111843
[2] http://wdb1.sco.com/kb/showta?taid=125718
Alberto Rodriguez
Hi Scot,
Many thanks for your answer.
This may work, but I have not tested it yet. Anyway, I'm talking about
systems with only one hard disk with separated filesystems for OS (/)
and data (/u).
Having a disk for OS and other(s) disk(s) for data, there are not
problems. I unplug the data disk(s) and install OSR6 from scratch.
Then I add additional disk(s) with the data untouched.
I was looking for a much simpler solution.
Anybody at SCO can help?
Best regards.