Wierd mksysb Problems

[westy04]

Can anyone shed some light on the wierd problem I am getting.
I'm recovering a customers system (onto a different system)which is running AIX 5.2.0.5.
I recover the mksysb fine. But when I run a 'df' there is only:

/
/usr
/var
/tmp
/proc

There are a number of file systems missing ie

/opt
/home

And other customer file systems that DO reside in 'rootvg'.

I then checked the image.data file. None of the file systems or LV's were in the image.data file.

Thinking this maybe a one off, I restored an image.data file from another mksysb and again the file systems were missing.

I have no way of looking at the customers live machine and the customer isn't AIX or Unix literate at all. But I got them to increase /tmp by 10Mb and run a 'mkszfile -X'. Then check the image.data file to see if the filesystems exsist. If so, then run a 'mksysb -iX /dev/rmt0'. When complete, check the image.data file again.
They reported that the file systems were there. (I'm not so sure).

They gave me this newly created mksysb today. The first thing I did was to restore just the 'image.data'. The time stamp within the image.data file was correct but the file systems were not there. I then catalogued the tape. Only the mount points for these file systems were there (no data within).

I've checked the bosinst.data file, all seems OK.

Sorry for the longish post, but does anyone have any ideas ???

Thanks


Kevin

 

[lsecure]

Hi,

not easy, when couldn't not seen what's going on at the customers side. One idea: Do you have checked about the existence of "exclude.rootvg" ?

Kind Regards
Loisl

 

[khalidaaa]

I've thought of this Loisl but since Kevin didn't use the -e option in the mksysb command then the exclude.rootvg won't be read!

Regards,
Khalid

 

[westy04]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

There is no '/etc/exclude.rootvg'. But even if there was, the mksysb should have recovered the file structure of the file systems, just not the data within them.

I've been recovering AIX systems on a daily basis for the last 8 years and have never come across a problem like this.

Thanks

Kevin

 

[khalidaaa]

Kevin,

Is it possible that the customer is using raw volumes?

This is taken from mksysb man page.

1    The image the mksysb command creates does not include data on raw devices or in user-defined paging spaces.
2    If you are using a system with a remote-mounted /usr file system, you cannot reinstall your system from a backup image.
3    The mksysb command may not restore all device configurations for special features, such as /dev/netbios and some device drivers not shipped with the product.
4    Some rspc systems for AIX 5.1 and earlier do not support booting from tape. When you make a bootable mksysb image on an rspc system for AIX 5.1 and earlier that does not support booting from tape, the mksysb command issues a warning indicating that the tape will not be bootable. You can install a mksysb image from a system that does not support booting from tape by booting from a CD and entering maintenance mode. In maintenance mode you will be able to install the system backup from tape.

5    The mksysb command uses the backup command to create its archive image. The -O option tells the backup command to use the compatible archive format instead. The mksysb command will also save the EA format for any JFS2 filesystems being backed up. It uses the /usr/bin/mkvgdata shell script to save this information.

One more thing to be used is that let the customer use the -v (verbose) option with the mksysb and direct the output to a file where you can see what is going on while mksysbing! There might be an error which is not shown to you!


Regards,
Khalid

 

[westy04]

Right.

It does appear that the image.data file on the customers machine is all correct.
However, it appears that a stripped out image.data file is being put onto the beggining of the mksysb.
Very, very confusing. I can only put this down to some type of bug.

 

[westy04]

Hi Khalid

There not raw, just your normal JFS2 mounted file systems.
Like I said earlier, it's even stripping out AIX file systems ie

/dev/hd10opt - /opt
/dev/hd1 - /home

I've now passed the problem back onto the customer to raise a fault call with there maintenance company.
It's definatly one of the most wierdest problems I have ever encountered, as there is no logic to it.

Kevin

 

[khalidaaa]

I would love to hear the update on this!

Good luck Kevin

Regards,
Khalid