Preparing Your System for HP-UX 11i v1

How to Prepare Your System

Use the following list to prepare to either install or update your system to HP-UX 11i v1:

Back up Your System!

In addition to your normal, periodic system backup procedures, you should create a backup tape or a network backup of your root volume group (see “Preparing Your System for HP-UX 11i v1”). Do this first before performing a cold-install or update, and again after the cold-install or update. If a problem occurs, it’s a very simple procedure to restore the system to its original state.

This section offers three alternatives for performing system backups: fbackup, make_tape_recovery, and make_net_recovery.

Using fbackup

Many administrators use the basic fbackup command to back up the entire system to tape. You do not need to unmount any imported file systems; fbackup does not cross NFS boundaries unless specified.

Using the normal tape location to do a full backup, insert a new tape and enter:

fbackup -f/dev/rmt/0m -i -v

Later, if you wish to return the system to its previous state, use the frecover command. See the fbackup(1M) manpage for examples.

Ignite-UX recovery commands

For recovering a system, a better alternative to using fbackup and frecover is to use the recovery commands available with Ignite-UX, which offer more flexibility than fbackup and frecover, including the ability to recover non-bootable systems.

The Ignite-UX server software for HP-UX 11i v1 is provided on the HP-UX 11i v1 OE media, and can be either cold-installed along with HP-UX 11i v1 to create a new server or specified in the update-ux command to update an existing Ignite-UX server to HP-UX 11i v1. See Chapter 2 for details.

Using make_tape_recovery

The Ignite-UX server’s make_tape_recovery command creates a bootable recovery tape for an LVM or whole disk file system while it is up and running. When a system has a logical volume layout, the recovery tape will only include data from the root volume group, plus data from any non-root volume group containing the /usr directory.

You can run make_tape_recovery either on the Ignite-UX server or locally on the system from which you are trying to make a recovery tape.

To create the bootable recovery tape, enter:

/opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -Av

where: v is for verbose mode and A specifies the entire root disk or volume group. Also, more than one volume group can be specified with the -x option.

If a tape drive other than the default (/dev/rmt/0m) will be used, modify the command to point to the device you want to use, for example a tape drive at /dev/rmt/3mn:

/opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -Av -d /dev/rmt/3mn

To recover a failed system disk or volume group after a recovery tape has been made, simply load the recovery tape, boot the system, interrupting the boot sequence (see Appendix A) to redirect to the tape drive. Allow the install process to complete. Do not intervene. The system will reboot and, because map files for all associated volume groups have been saved on the tape, any other existing volume groups are imported and mounted automatically. Data which is not in the root volume group must be backed up and recovered using normal backup utilities.

For more information on using make_tape_recovery, see the make_tape_recovery(1M) manpage on an Ignite-UX server or Chapter 11 of the Ignite-UX Administration Guide. The guide is available on the HP-UX 11i v1 Instant Information CD and at this web site:

http://docs.hp.com/

Using make_net_recovery

The Ignite-UX server also has the make_net_recovery command to create a system recovery archive on another system on the network. The archive created by make_net_recovery is specific to the system it was created for and its identity includes hostname, IP_address, networking information, and so on. In the event of a root disk failure, you use the Ignite-UX server to restore the system by installing the recovery archive.

The contents of the system recovery archive always includes all files and directories which are essential to bringing up a functional system. This “essential” list is pre-defined by make_net_recovery. You can run make_net_recovery in its interactive mode to review the directories and files which make up the “essential list,” and also add or remove other data from the archive on a disk/volume group, file, or directory basis.

For more information on using make_net_recovery, see the make_net_recovery(1M) manpage or Chapter 11 of the Ignite-UX Administration Guide.

Preparing to Cold-Install Your System

This section details the recommended tasks you should perform before you cold-install your system. These tasks should be completed in addition to the tasks listed in “Preparing Your System for HP-UX 11i v1”.

Save Configuration Files

If you are planning to cold-install HP-UX 11i v1 rather than update an existing system, be sure to save the files that you will want to re-install. These include a number of configuration files in /etc, the contents of /usr/local, any local home directories (that is, those you do not import from another system), and any configuration files located in the /opt directories for installed software.

If multiple users are preparing for the cold-install, you might consider creating a directory (such as /backup) on another system. Do not create this directory on your root disk. Mount it with sam. Then create a subdirectory for each system or user (for example, /backup/your_sys).

As root, copy the files. For example:

1. Copy all config files from /etc on a system named moe to system curly. On curly, enter:

   mkdir /backup/moe/etc
   rcp -p your_name@moe:/etc/* /backup/moe/etc/.

2. Copy your local home directory to the backup system:

   mkdir /backup/moe/home
   rcp -pr your_name@moe:/home/ /backup/moe/home/

   and so on...

Colors and fonts

If you want to preserve your colors and fonts in VUE or CDE, execute:

xrdb -q > xrdb.save

Then save the xrdb.save file in your backup directory.

	NOTE: VUE is not supported beyond HP-UX 10.20

Preparing to Update Your Existing System

The update-ux command is new to HP-UX 11i v1 and replaces swinstall for operating system updates. It performs many of the steps that used to be manual operations needed prior to calling swinstall, as well as incorporating the swinstall mechanisms.

Preparation Tasks

Before you update your system, we recommend that you take the following actions: