Raid card install in Unixware 7.1.1 box

[noexpert]

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out the best way to install an IBM ServeRaid card into an existing UX 7.1.1 system that currently has two drives attched to an existing Adaptec SCSI adaptor.

My initial thoughts were to install the card, including drivers in the system as is, configure the card to mirror drives and rebuild the kernel. Then backup the whole system, disconnect the exisiting drives, change the BIOS setting to boot off the new drives, boot from emergency recovery diskettes/tape and perform a restore on the new disks attached to the raid card (mirrored).

Does any one know how feasible it is to restore the root disk to a disk located on a different adaptor ?

Can I just change the boot drive in the BIOS - the system is an IBM Netfinity - to get the system to boot off the drive on the raid card ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[pcunix]

Your initial thought is fine, except you don't necessarily need to use recovery disks- if the drivers are in place, the UW kernel will rebuild itself to use the new controller. That wouldn't work for RAID 5 of course, but should work for this mirroring switch. My dusty memory says I've actually done something very like this a number of years ago, so a modernm UW certainly should be able to handle it.

But of course it can screw up, so your backup plan is to be ready to restore from backup. For that task, I certainly wouldn't mess with Unixware's primitive and clumsy EBD's- I'd use a professional product like one of the Supertars (

http://pcunix.com/Reviews/supertars.html

).

You can download fully functional demos of these and use them for this (the companies who sell these encourage this use because they hope you will realize after trying the product that you should own it). I'd make backups and boot media both prior to adding the drivers and after..



Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources

http://pcunix.com

tony@pcunix.com

 

[noexpert]

Thanks for that Tony,

Yes I forgot to mention the full backup before doing anything, thanks for reminding me.

After I have installed the raid card rebuilt the kernel and disconnected the exisiting drives i.e. pull the power from them, changed the boot device in BIOS and then boot off the emergency recovery diskettes, do you think the system will recognise/know that the new (blank) drives are what I want to be able to boot from ? Or will it still try to access the (powered off) drive on the other (non-raid) SCSI controller ?

I have a cpio of the complete system on tape so I can always skip the recovery tape and use that, after partitioning and slicing of course. Actually that's one of the things that makes the recovery tape attractive, from what I've been told recovery from the tape will do all the partitioning etc for you, do you know if this is fact or fiction, there aren't many detail in the Unixware manual ?

Thanks again.

 

[pcunix]

Yes, I believe the UW will generally do what you expect. But you need a disaster plan just in case.

If you continue to ignore my advice about the supertars you are being very, very foolish. You DO NOT want to mess with that clumsy, dumb UW recovery junk. You can get FULLY FUNCTIONAL demos of the supertars for free- why wouldn't you?

Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources

http://pcunix.com

tony@pcunix.com