Clone boot disk

[warrenliang]

Hello:
What is the best practice to clone a boot disk?
Like to clone HP-UX 11.0 boot disk to a newly installed disk (c0t3d0 and c0t4d0) for O/S upgrade purpose. If upgrade goes wrong, I can simply boot the box backup to its original state by using the cloned disk as the boot device.
The current boot environment is vg00, consists of 2 disks (c0t5d0 and c0t6d0). All O/S related file systems are in the first disk /dev/dsk/c0t6d0. We only have VxFS Basic license.
Thanks

 

[Martin999]

Mirror it, make it bootable, test it, then split the mirror.

Easier, make a make_recover tape, but slower to recover.

Martin

 

[warrenliang]

Thanks Martin.
Since this box does not have VxFS Mirror license, my option is limited.
I managed to build a new VG and lvols. Copied current file systems to the new VG (called NewVG00). The NewVG00 consists of c0t3d0. If I boot off from c0t3d0, then, LVM still points to the original c0t6d0. How can I change the LVM settings from c0t6d0 to c0t3d0?
Thanks in advance.
Warren

 

[Martin999]

Not sure this will work, there are a number of files that you may have copied across that contain LVM header info, with details of the original VGs, not the new ones. Top of my head I may have missed a couple. (There is a VGID that will be different, which will cause issues).

/etc/ioconfig
/stand/ioconfig
/dev
/etc/lvmtab
/etc/fstab
/etc/lvmconf

So - without mirror disk, I would use ignite, create a make_recovery tape, then boot off this tape and restore if necessary. No need to clone anything.

Failing that, if you have a backup, you could reinstall off CD, or ignite server, then restore the whole system, apart from the above files.

I suspect the reason your pointing at the wrong disk is down to lvnboot ...

Martin

 

[Martin999]

Right another thought, brain now in gear ...

Use dd to copy the disk, should work to boot then, but you may have to put it into the slot the original boot disk was in.

Martin