Upgrading drives in 3.12

[jb]

I have a 3.12 server (P266) from a customer with 4gig SCSI drives mirrored,
attached to a 2940UW card. About four months ago, the system would produce
various errors at least once a week. These errors were Vol SYS: dismounts
because of errors as well as both Vol SYS: & VOL1: dismounting. Rebooting
the server and running VRepair would fix the problem every time. They have
two main things on this server - my custom DOS database which is very large
and Cheyenne FaxServer (CA now). My database is used by about 35
simultaneous people all day long.

About six weeks ago, I brought in a spare server I had (P300, dual 9gig
SCSI's, 256meg ram, 2940UW), copied there data over, added the users,
changed server names and rebooted each and have not had a problem since!
The only thing I was not able to activate was the FaxServe, but that has not
been too much of a problem.

So, I do not know if it is the hard drives, the 2940UW or what. I know that
I was told on one of the times the system had crashed, that in the monitor
screen, he could not see any hard drives attached to the controller. I was
on the phone with him and while we were talking, all of a sudden the hard
drives appeared in the drive info box. Now, I know that some times it takes
up to a minute to get this info displayed, but this was a good 5-7 minutes.

Any way, I have a new pair of 9gig SCSI drives, more memory, and I plan on
switching out the 2940UW card with the one that is working fine in my spare
server. What I wanted to know is, do I have to install the 3.12 from
scratch and then reapply all the patches and downloads to get it current
again? Or, can I somehow get one of the 9gig drives into the system (as
drive E), I know how to copy over the DOS partition, and somehow get all the
info duplicated onto the new drive, then remove the old drives and boot off
the new 9gig drive? (I know how to add the other to create the mirror) It's
not the time it would take to do a fresh install, it is that FaxServe would
have to be re-installed and even thought I have the CD's, you have to call
them to get a license key (even though I have the current license files) and
they don't support this version any more. So, by getting info copied back
over, I would be all set on the Faxserve side too (Faxserve creates a
special print queue under the Sys:Faxserve folder that it uses for printing
& converting faxes. Any Thoughts?

Thanks,

John

[Barry Schnur]

Perhaps this approach might be of use:

John Pence (a frequent contributor) put together this note which may be of
use here:

This process will let you swap the disk containing the sys volume with
another disk in the same server. Very useful for upgrading server hard
drives without using tape. (I've modified this to take into account the
likely need for the replacement drive to be a DOS boot drive with the OS)

This version of the note is modified for 3X use.

1) Install the new drive in the server.
2) Using FDISK, create a DOS partition -- say 100M.
3) Format the DOS partition with /S to include boot DOS files.
4) Copy all files from the 'to be replaced' DOS partition over to
the new drive with something like XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /S /E /V
5) Restart Netware (from the original C drive).
6) Create a netware partition on the new drive.
7) Create a "newsys" volume on the new drive and mount it.
NOTE, make sure to add long file name support if the original volumes
had it.
8) Log in to the server as Supervisor and run BINDFIX. This will copy
the old bindery files to *.OLD and create new *.SYS files.
9) Run BINDFIX a second time to insure that the *.OLD and *.SYS files are
the same.
10) Copy data from sys to newsys -- note! Ncopy will not retain rights.
You will either need to use something like Arcserve's copy function,
or something like fstrust. (FSTrust can be found at www.dreamlan.com).
If rights are not an issue, then ncopy will work fine.

Also, Novell provides a downloadable utility for handling rights as
well -- TCOPY2.EXE (track it down at:

http://support.novell.com/misc/patlst.htm#tools

11) Dismount sys
12) Dismount newsys
13) Load Install from one of the DOS partitions.
14) Rename sys to oldsys
15) Rename newsys to sys
16) Down and restart Server from the NEW drive's DOS partition. At this
Point, default minimalist versions of the bindery files will be in
place with Supervisor and Guess access and no passwords.
17) Log in to the server as supervisor (no passwords required) from a
workstation and run BINDREST. This will restore the original Bindery
files (steps 8 thru 9 above created these files)
18) Verify that all files, users, groups, trustee rights, etc have been
copied properly and users can log in and work as before the change.
Having done this, you can remove move OLDSYS.
19) Down the server, exit to DOS, and power off. You can remove the
original drive, then make sure to change the SCSI ID's to make the
replacement drive the boot drive.
20) It's possible that DOS won't let you boot from the replaced drive,
if this is the case, boot from a DOS floppy, run FDISK and make sure
to set the DOS partition on the new drive to be the primary and boot
partition. Doing this should NOT affect existing files on the DOS
partition.
21) Power off and restart the system and server.

Barry Schnur
Novell Support Connection Sysop

Please post replies ONLY via the Newsgroup

[Felton Green (SysOp)]

Hi

I would install a new controller in the old server [same model] and run a
low VERIFY. I would also try new cables.

Then I see if you could bring the server up. If you can, then take the
drives and put them in the new box.

Then I'd duplicate the sys vol and duplex

--
Felton Green (SysOp)
Novell Support Connection Forums

[jb]

That sounds like a plan. Thanks very much.
"Barry Schnur" <bsc...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:n51bkuo2ifassfnqv...@4ax.com...

[Barry Schnur]

OK -- let us know how it works out. And pay close attention to the sequence
-- there are a bunch of steps involved.