Recovery backups to slightly different hardware

From: Chris Hoogendyk (hoogendyk@bio.umass.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 18 2006 - 12:50:18 EDT


I have been trying to do a proof of concept and document the details to
recover one of our critical servers in case it fails for some reason.
(Just last month we had a building wide power snafu that caused untold
$$$ damage. My servers survived, but the event instilled the fear of
God, so to speak.) The server in question is a Sun Blade 100 (yeah, I
know, it's not a Server) that is running our name services and for our
internal network. If it goes down, the network starts falling apart.

Anyway, most of our departmental servers are E250's, and we happen to
have a few extra E250's for backup.

Both of these systems are sun4u and we are running Solaris 9. I have
backup tapes that are done using ufsdump from an fssnap snapshot piped
through ssh to a remote tape drive on another server. I've used these to
recover files and directories, but never had to do a full recovery. So,
I figured I would grab a backup tape, a spare E250, plop some drives in
it, and try to do a recovery.

I started out by booting off the Solaris 9 install CD, formatting and
partitioning c0t0d0 to match the boot drive on the Sun Blade, and then
doing newfs and recovering all the partitions from the backup tape using
ufsrestore. Everything seems to be there. I went into /mnt/etc and did
`mv hostname.eri0 hostname.hme0` for each of the interfaces, 'cause I
knew that would hit. Then I did the installboot, got back to the OK
prompt and did a `boot disk:d` (that's where the root partition is). It
goes through all it's stuff and finishes up with:

-----------------------------

Rebooting with command: boot disk:d
Boot device: /pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/disk@0,0:d File and args:
Loading ufs-file-system package 1.4 04 Aug 1995 13:02:54.
FCode UFS Reader 1.12 00/07/17 15:48:16.
Loading: /platform/SUNW,Ultra-250/ufsboot
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic_118558-03
64-bit|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/|\-/
Copyright 1983-2003 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
WARNING: status 'fail' for '/rsc'-/|\-/|\-/
configuring IPv4 interfaces: hme0 hme0:1 hme0:10 hme0:2 hme0:3 hme0:4
hme0:5 hme0:6 hme0:7 hme0:8 hme0:9.
Hostname: pilot
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1: No such device or address
The / file system (/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3) is being checked.
Can't open /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3
/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3: CAN'T CHECK FILE SYSTEM.
/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.

WARNING - Unable to repair the / filesystem. Run fsck
manually (fsck -F ufs /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s3). Exit the shell when
done to continue the boot process.

Type control-d to proceed with normal startup,
(or give root password for system maintenance):

-----------------------------

When I went in and tried `format`, it said "no disks found".

I rebooted off the cdrom, did `format`, and they are there.

I actually did 2 more things in the process of debugging and getting to
this point.

I did `mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 /mnt`, went into /mnt/etc and did a
`touch reconfigure`.

I also went into /mnt/platform/SUNW,Ultra-250 and didn't find a "unix",
whereas I did find it in /mnt/platform/sun4u. So, I did `mv
SUNW,Ultra-250 SUNW,Ultra-250.orig` followed by a `ln -s sun4u
SUNW,Ultra-250`. This got me past an earlier error, ... I think.

So, now I'm stuck and not quite sure whether this is impossible or I'm
just missing the magic trick. I thought since they were both UltraSPARC
and sun4u that I would be able to do it. Any suggestions or insight
would be much appreciated.

---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__ ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst

<hoogendyk@bio.umass.edu>

---------------

Erdvs 4
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