Cloning a system from mksysb file, not tape... Is it possible?

[TSch]

Hi folks,

we got a very old RS6000 in our company without any tape drive attached. Now we'd like to do an mksysb to a file on the hardisk, to copy this via ftp to another machine and to restore this onto that new system.

The new system has a CDROM drive, so it should be possible to restore a standard mksysb TAPE image ...

But is it also possible using an image residing on the harddisk of that system (Something like "Alternative Disk install" or "Clone system to another disk" ?

Problem might be that the mksysb image will have to be copied onto the disk that we'd also like to restore the image onto... Is there any way or would be have to install a second disk first ?

Thanks for your help !

Regards
Thomas

 

[victorv]

Hi,
for the system part, cloning an old machine to a new is
not a good idea. Also if you had an external Tape (with
right cables) was no good (and difficult) to clone it.
You had to install additional driver in old machine
before to backup : which devices ? all ?
Then boot new system from CD, go in maint-mode and restore.

Making a fresh installation, cleans all problems and
errors made on the old system.

If in old system there are 3d part program installed,
maby the fresh install can give you some problems.

However, you can backup the old system , via NFS, in a
large filesystem ( compressed, why not ) exported from
the new system, to be sure that all files of the old
system are available to you, when the old will be off.
You can use this backup for future use, you can leave it
on new disk, until you have space.

Moreover, you can copy the part of user-data, to the new system always by NFS, and port it online

To create an CD image of old system, is not easy:
you have to find a SCSI CD writer, install GNU cdrecord
and following create Generic CD image (requires AIX CDROM)
you obtain bootable image: but it has all deect above exposed.

To use Alternate...Clone you had to put disk of new machine
in old (add), but you have the same problem : different platform, driver...

Cloning is possible, AIX is the best in this field, also
with different platform ( rs6k, rspc, chrp ).
In large environment we use NIM : there is a server that
contains varoius image, but it is not a simple cloning:
the server boots differetn platf, unload userdata (image)
and add driver specific for the machine.

bye

 

[mrn]

Why not use the remote tape drive?

See

http://nimbus.elte.hu/AIX/index1_2.html#1.201

--
| Mike Nixon
| Unix Admin
|

http://www.instantflashshop.com

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

 

[victorv]

hi,

- all above considerations rest valid.

- I have not seen tape driver on new system.

- I have had a look at the site:

+ are you sure that obtained tape is bootable ?

+ the article was about AIX V3 ( mksysb V4 is different)

+ are the file system, page, created same the old

+ in V3 was almost easy boot from net: in V4
this simple feature has ben substituted by NIM
( a powerful but a not simple animal (IBM typical))

bye

 

[andersjacobson]

Hi TSch,

When you make a mksysb to a tape you will get all the needed meta-information for rootvg + all filesystems on the tape. When you save to a file, you only get the data archive (all mounted FS in rootvg in a 'backup' format). The meta-data will then be in /tmp. backing up to a file is truly intended for recovry of the target system.

Ciao,

Anders