Boot Problem

[shorty545]

shorty545 (IS/IT--Management) 17 Aug 06 17:19
I'm new to the Sun world and have found myself in a tight spot. I have a Sun V240, someone accidently wiped the /etc directory. Therefore I cannot boot. I need to recover the data, but I cannot find a way to get into the drive. I do not understand why there is no video card installed as well as no cd-rom. Again I'm new.

Is there a way to try and recover the data through the mgt interface or the iLO? Or how can I boot to a LiveCD of some sort? Will the box recognize a USB CD-ROM drive to boot from?

How is it possible to rebuild the box without a video card, cdrom, keyboard or mouse inputs?

Thanks,

 

[coffeysm]

Jeez man....LOL. You can hook up a laptop or some other computer to the serial interface that should give you a console connection. If you have a Jumpstart server you can do a network boot of that and then restore the data. My question for you though do you have a working backup server?

 

[shorty545]

I've hooked a laptop up to the serial interface and can connect to the console. Yes the backup is now in production. I don't have a Jumpstart server or anything else to do a network boot off of.

The console session tells me that /etc/system cannot be found. I think that may be my problem lol... I've never worked with a Sun box before, so naturally i'm kind of lost

Any advice for data recovery of the disk?

 

[KenCunningham]

Can you ftp the contents of the production /etc to the backup server?

All I ask of you
Is make my wildest dreams come true

 

[shorty545]

I can get the contents of the production /etc, but how would I load it into the backup server. Can I do this through the serial mgt interface? Only problem is, the production box is not Sun/Solaris. This happens to be the only Sun box in our environment. Don't ask why, because I have no idea... already here when i joined on.

 

[KenCunningham]

If it's not Solaris at both ends, I'd be loath to try, to be honest.

All I ask of you
Is make my wildest dreams come true

 

[shorty545]

thanks, i'll try to build a jumpstart box to boot from. Maybe that will work.

 

[coffeysm]

Good luck!

 

[marrow]

Just a couple of ideas: -
1) worth a try
You say the /etc was wiped, do you actually know this happened. If not have you tried running "fsck -y"

2)probably will fail...
I haven't really given this much thought before but of course /etc/system must be present but can't you just create another "/etc/system" file, via touch or vi, sometimes (if non mirrored) system has very little real data.

 

[shorty545]

I can't create it because I cannot get the system to boot. The box also has no video adapter or cd-rom. My only access to the box is through the iLO port(which is absolutely useless), or through the serial mgt. port.

 

[kHz]

If you build a jumpstart server you should be able to fix it. The jumpstart server shouldn't take long to build either. You can build a jumpstart server on your laptop.

Since you don't have a cdrom you have no other choice other than a jumpstart server right now. The question is, why isn't there already a jumpstart server if there isn't any cdrom drive?

 

[shorty545]

The laptop I have is a Windows box. Is it possible to install Solaris on a Virtual PC drive?

"The question is, why isn't there already a jumpstart server if there isn't any cdrom drive"
-- There is only a single Sun box in our environment. I have only been here for a short time, I believe it was setup by a local consulting company. They must have had this.

 

[coffeysm]

You might be able to use vmware or something on your laptop. I am not sure though...

 

[coffeysm]

I would invest in buying a cd-rom and video card for your ONLY Sun box though...

 

[kHz]

You can setup a jumpstart server on linux to install solaris but I have never heard of jumpstart on windows. not sure about the virtual drive, though vmware would probably work and you could use a demo or trial copy just to get your jumpstart server built.

Even if you have to rebuild the server you will need jumpstart to do it since you don't have a cd drive. you could partition your windows drive and have a small partition for solaris or linux (balk) for your jumpstart server. 3 or 4 gig would probably be enough.

 

[shorty545]

Is it possible to jumpstart a SUN Sparc box from an Intel x86 box?
I'm installing Solaris on an Intel box to try.

 

[coffeysm]

Not sure never tried it, but I know you can do the reverse order so I imagine so.

 

[djr111]

you can take that disk out of the server, put it in a diskpack then attach that diskpack to another server and mount it to /mnt or something, and restore the data of /mnt/etc using that server.

I know we were able to do this with Legato Networker, I had to do it once on a filesystem a user DBA deleted.

If you are going to use the /etc of another server, you will have to change all the files that are specific to that server... IE: /etc/hosts /etc/nodename and so on.

 

[shorty545]

We have no other Sun servers though.

 

[djr111]

do you at least have a sun keyboard for the system?

you should be able to connect via a laptop, but what I have notice at my current employer is that when a server is built via a monitor and keyboard it defaults, you say you do not have a video card, so this may shoot my theory to the trash.

output-device=screen
input-device=keyboard

if you can hook up a keyboard, try to power up the server, we know the OS will not come up, but it should be able to run to post.

once the server starts coming up (few secnds after power-on), hit <stop>-a

and blindly type:

ok setenv output-device ttya
ok setenv input-device ttya
ok reset

the machine should reboot and hopefully work, if not...sorry


maybe this will let you see it via hyperteminal