Ignite-UX Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i (B3921-90079, October 2013)
Creating and Using Recovery Tapes
The Ignite-UX make_tape_recovery command creates a system recovery tape that can be used
to boot and recover a system that is not bootable due to corruption of the root disk or root volume
group. A system can be booted and installed from the tape without user intervention, including
configuration, customization, software selection, hostname, and networking information.
A bootable recovery tape can be created from the Ignite-UX server, however the client must have
a local tape drive.
It is preferable to use the Ignite-UX GUI on the Ignite-UX server when running an interactive
make_tape_recovery session. Executing it from the Ignite-UX GUI causes any additional server
configuration of NFS mounts to be performed. Additionally, more informative progress reporting
is provided, and it is easier to use that interface.
IMPORTANT: The media and data format (density and compression) of the installation tape you
create must be compatible with the clients on which it will be read. For example, if you have a
mixture of DDS4 and DDS5 tape drives on your systems and you wish to be able to read recovery
tapes on any of them, you should only use DDS4 media, as DDS5 media will not work in DDS4
drives.
The contents of the system recovery image will always include all files and directories that are
considered essential to bringing up a functional system. This essential list is predefined by
make_tape_recovery and is located in the following file:
/opt/ignite/recovery/mnr_essentials
In addition to the essential list, data can be included in the recovery image on a disk/volume
group, file, or directory basis. Nonessential files and directories can also be excluded.
The tape created by make_tape_recovery is completely self-contained and does not require
an Ignite-UX server to install the recovery image. The make_tape_recovery recovery image
contains a specially prepared LIF volume. The configuration file in the LIF volume is the configuration
file for the recovery archive. The /var/opt/ignite/data/INDEX file in the LIF volume specifies
the recovery configuration as the default for the system. The recovery tape contains additional
configuration information so no user interaction is required.
Additional files needed for booting and installing are copied from
/opt/ignite/boot/Rel_release and /opt/ignite/data to the LIF volume on the tape,
so everything the system needs to recover is there.
NOTE: During the recovery process, when the file system is set up and the I/O tree is initialized,
tape device files may be mapped differently from when the original recovery tape was made.
Therefore, it is possible for a recovery tape to be created with one tape device file, for instance
/dev/rmt/0m, and recovered from a different device file, such as /dev/rmt/2m, though the
physical device is the same.
You can also replicate a system and create a recovery image that can be used for installing clients.
The section, “Notes on Cloning Systems” (page 215) describes how to make use of this process.
For additional information regarding system cloning, see the Successful System Cloning using
Ignite-UX white paper at
http://www.hp.com/go/ignite-ux-docs.
IMPORTANT: If you use make_tape_recovery for recovery, your tapes should be clearly
labeled with the Ignite-UX version used to create them to avoid mixing Ignite-UX versions when
two-step media recovery is used. See “Tape Recovery With No Tape Boot Support — Two-Step
Media Recovery” (page 214) for more information.
Recovery Tape Creation Examples
The following examples are intended to assist you in using the make_tape_recovery tool.
198 Recovery