Cloning a disk under SCO OpenServer

[alrip]

Hi,

Anybody out there who has successfully cloned a disk under SCO OpenServer? I have been pulling my hair out for the last week getting this done.

Here's what I've got so far.

- two identical disks (make, model, capacity)
- used 'dd' to copy over contents of primary to secondary
- used 'fsck' on secondary to ensure integrity
- took primary out of system
- set secondary to primary's hardware address

When I try to boot up the system, I get nothing. All blank. However, when I try to restore the system and mount the partitions on the secondary disk, they seem identical to the primary. Even the 'divvy' table comes up identical. Shouldn't 'dd' be doing an exact clone? Any help is much appreciated.

I am aware of commercial products that can pull this off but want a hands down approach.

Thanks!

 

[edfair]

try man cpio. think cpio picks up what dd has left off.
But since I don't use either I can't say for sure. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Annihilannic]

I would guess you need to install a boot block (which is not part of the filesystem itself), though I'm not sure how to do this under SCO I'm afraid. Annihilannic.

 

[warpcore]

I have the same need, for SCO Open Server 5.0.4.
Have an 8 Gig. drive, 2 Gig.-Unix part, 2 Gig. Primary Dos, 4 Gig. Extended with logical of D: 2 Gig. and E: 2 Gig.

I want ( need ) to be able to do a back-up image of the Unix part as a file on Dos, then transfer via network or burn a CD. to make a save backup ( off the computer).

I have used PQ Drive Image, it seems to work, but after a restore, the boot manager is corrupted. I assume that the MBR links do not get updated, I have spent the last coouple of weeks trying to learn about MBR's and there FAT links.

 

[Annihilannic]

Have you tried using SCO's fdisk to "activate" the partition on which you've installed your operating system? Annihilannic.

 

[Annihilannic]

Failing that, I would try dparam -w /dev/rhdNN to copy /etc/masterboot on to the disk, and then use dparam /dev/rhdNN characteristics to set the disk characteristics. You can use dparam to find out what they were on the previous disk. Annihilannic.

 

[stanhubble]

Yes you will need to write the boot tracks.

- with new drive installed boot with root and boot diskettes
- dd if=/etc/hdboot0 of=/dev/hd0a
- dd if=/etc/hdboot1 of=/dev/hd0a bs=1k seek=1

if this doesnt work, you may need to run fdisk to make sure the partition is marked as active.

 

[waridi]

Hi...
Can i remove all file in all subdirectories of
/usr/spool/mmdf/lock/home using "rm" command.

 

[apeasecpc]

In response to waridi

rm -r is equivalent to a DOS deltree command, but what exactly are you trying to do? The /usr/spool/mmdf/lock/home directory is part of the OS, so you don't want to delete it.

 

[alrip]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the inputs. I've managed to figure out how to solve my own question. I guess keeping it simple has its own merits. What I basically did was to divvy my secondary disk exactly as my primary. To update my secondary disk, i just copied (cp -f -R) each mountable filesystem from the primary. In order to boot off the secondary disk, i just used dparam and dd.

The names of the divisions don't really matter as long as the divisions match up. Whoever is on the primary disk address gets to boot up with the prefixed divisions. I just needed to use different names on my secondary divisions in order to mount them while the primary was still online.

Although I was able to do a poor man's mirror, there are still some weird things going on. One of which is that whenever I edit the filesys file, it seems to get updated on both partitions even if the secondary is not mounted. I've noticed this happen on other partitions as well. Really weird. It is like a mirror is running in the background. Anybody with more information regarding this is more than welcome to share their experience.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Alrip