hi,

i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
and always work for me:

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k


but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
it didnt work.

Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
partition, geometry.

The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.

But i am able to mount all the partitions while booted on CD and
everything looks identical to me.  I also did installboot just to make
sure.  But it still didnt work.

anyone else had the similiar problem with 72GB hard disks?

thanks,
tony z.

tony wrote:
> hi,
>
> i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> and always work for me:
>
> dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
>
>
> but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
> it didnt work.
>
> Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
> partition, geometry.
>
> The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.
>
> But i am able to mount all the partitions while booted on CD and
> everything looks identical to me.  I also did installboot just to make
> sure.  But it still didnt work.
>
> anyone else had the similiar problem with 72GB hard disks?
>
> thanks,
> tony z.

I do not like dd, too low level.

Why not do a ufsdump/restore?

..

Never had such an issue, try to create a SVM based mirror on that disk
and then break the mirror and change /etc/vfstab on the copiesd disk.
IF you don't know how, i can send  you a step-by--step guide. This is
calid only if you are using solaris 9 or 10.
tony wrote:
> hi,
>
> i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> and always work for me:
>
> dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
>
>
> but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
> it didnt work.
>
> Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
> partition, geometry.
>
> The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.
>
> But i am able to mount all the partitions while booted on CD and
> everything looks identical to me.  I also did installboot just to make
> sure.  But it still didnt work.
>
> anyone else had the similiar problem with 72GB hard disks?
> 
> thanks,
> tony z.

tony wrote:
> hi,
>
> i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> and always work for me:
>
> dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
> ...

This is almost certain to produce an inconsistent copy if used on a
mounted filesystem. As other posters suggest, you need to copy from an
offline submirror, use a ufs snapshot, etc.

>
> anyone else had the similiar problem with 72GB hard disks?
> 
> thanks,
> tony z.

nope.  The system was booted from cdrom when i did the dd.  So there
should not be any inconsistent issue.  I dont want have to install SVM
and stuff, have not tried ufs dump through.  This is solaris 8.  As i
wrote in my orginally post, this method has always work for me before
until i come across this 72GB disks.  I just trying to figure out why
it didnt work this time.  But maybe i could be wrong disk size was not
the issue.  Has anyone successfully dd a 72GB internal OS and boot up
is what i am asking.

thanks,
tony z.
toby wrote:
> tony wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> > and always work for me:
> >
> > dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
> > ...
>
> This is almost certain to produce an inconsistent copy if used on a
> mounted filesystem. As other posters suggest, you need to copy from an
> offline submirror, use a ufs snapshot, etc.
>
> >
> > anyone else had the similiar problem with 72GB hard disks?
> > 
> > thanks,
> > tony z.

tony <zuodong@optonline.net> wrote:
> i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> and always work for me:

> dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k

> but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
> it didnt work.

> Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
> partition, geometry.

> The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.

Did you swap the disks before trying to boot, or did you modify
/etc/vfstab so it tries to mount from the copy?

What are the messages you get from the boot?

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
         < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

i take the disk to another E280R server to boot.

I dont have the exact error messages now because i had to rebuild a
server very quickly and cannot afford a lot of time troubleshooting
this, so i just reinstalled the OS.   But basically the error messages
are indicating it didnt mount /usr patition successfully.  But i be
able to mount the user patition to a temp mount point once boot up from
cdrom fine.   and dont see anything wrong with that patition and i
fscked it fine too.

thanks,
tony z.
Darren Dunham wrote:
> tony <zuodong@optonline.net> wrote:
> > i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> > and always work for me:
>
> > dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
>
> > but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
> > it didnt work.
>
> > Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
> > partition, geometry.
>
> > The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.
>
> Did you swap the disks before trying to boot, or did you modify
> /etc/vfstab so it tries to mount from the copy?
>
> What are the messages you get from the boot?
>
> --
> Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
> Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
> Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
>          < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

tony <zuodong@optonline.net> wrote:
>The system was booted from cdrom when i did the dd.  So there
>should not be any inconsistent issue.  

There's your mistake.  Just because a disk is not mounted when
{ufs,}{dump,restore}'d does not mean there should be no inconsistency.

Problem is disks have defects.  SCSI disks have defect tables to keep
track of them.  When you use a program like dd, which was never meant to
copy one disk to another, you overwrite the destination disk's defective
blocks and, if scsi, defect table.

This is a common enough mistake among apprentice systems administrators.
Just scroogle and man the respective ufsdump, ufsrestore, vfstab, and
installboot documentation and you'll be on your way.

If you just need to copy partitions, particularly raw database partitions,
then you can probably CYA by running md5/sum/md5sum on both source and
destination partitions.  Otherwise use see the example in the ufsrestore
man page.

PreF

tony wrote:
> i take the disk to another E280R server to boot.

I believe that the E280R is facl. FACL drives take some monkeying with
to clone a boot disk. The following is my notes to clone a Blade 1000/2000
boot disk:

After cloning the harddrive do the following:
These notes assume that the newly cloned drive is mounted on /a
1. rm  /a/etc/path_to_inst
2. rm /a/etc/path_to_inst.old
3. devfsadm -v -C -r /a
4. Then try to boot.

If boot fails then take note as to what
file system can't be fsck'd, boot net or cd, mount disk on /a,
and edit /a/etc/vfstab to point to whatever location the
fsck was complaining about.
The diskdrives on the Blade 1000/2000 seem to magically change
from /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 to /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 to /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0
to whatever...

> 
> I dont have the exact error messages now because i had to rebuild a
> server very quickly and cannot afford a lot of time troubleshooting
> this, so i just reinstalled the OS.   But basically the error messages
> are indicating it didnt mount /usr patition successfully.  But i be
> able to mount the user patition to a temp mount point once boot up from
> cdrom fine.   and dont see anything wrong with that patition and i
> fscked it fine too.
> 
> thanks,
> tony z.
> Darren Dunham wrote:
>> tony <zuodong@optonline.net> wrote:
>>> i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
>>> and always work for me:
>>> dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
>>> but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
>>> it didnt work.
>>> Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
>>> partition, geometry.
>>> The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.
>> Did you swap the disks before trying to boot, or did you modify
>> /etc/vfstab so it tries to mount from the copy?
>>
>> What are the messages you get from the boot?
>>
>> --
>> Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
>> Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
>> Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
>>          < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >
> 


-- 
----------------------------------
Randy Jones
E-Mail: randy@jones.tri.net
----------------------------------

PreF@nomail.net wrote:
> Problem is disks have defects.  SCSI disks have defect tables to keep
> track of them.  When you use a program like dd, which was never meant to
> copy one disk to another, you overwrite the destination disk's defective
> blocks and, if scsi, defect table.

Nonsense.

-- 
Daniel

tony wrote:
> i take the disk to another E280R server to boot.
>
> I dont have the exact error messages now because i had to rebuild a
> server very quickly and cannot afford a lot of time troubleshooting
> this, so i just reinstalled the OS.   But basically the error messages
> are indicating it didnt mount /usr patition successfully.  But i be
> able to mount the user patition to a temp mount point once boot up from
> cdrom fine.   and dont see anything wrong with that patition and i
> fscked it fine too.

OK, well I bet the device names have changed on the destination
machine.  So vfstab is saying mount c0t0d0s3 or whatever, and it's
actually c3t2d0s3 now.

--tim

PreF@nomail.net wrote:
> tony <zuodong@optonline.net> wrote:
> 
>>The system was booted from cdrom when i did the dd.  So there
>>should not be any inconsistent issue.  
> 
> 
> There's your mistake.  Just because a disk is not mounted when
> {ufs,}{dump,restore}'d does not mean there should be no inconsistency.
> 
> Problem is disks have defects.  SCSI disks have defect tables to keep
> track of them.  When you use a program like dd, which was never meant to
> copy one disk to another, you overwrite the destination disk's defective
> blocks and, if scsi, defect table.
> 
> This is a common enough mistake among apprentice systems administrators.
> Just scroogle and man the respective ufsdump, ufsrestore, vfstab, and
> installboot documentation and you'll be on your way.
> 
> If you just need to copy partitions, particularly raw database partitions,
> then you can probably CYA by running md5/sum/md5sum on both source and
> destination partitions.  Otherwise use see the example in the ufsrestore
> man page.
> 
> PreF
the above is not true !
dd does not manage defect tables, rct or any low level scsi.
/Jorgen

thanks randy!  That did it!

tony z.
Randy Jones wrote:
> tony wrote:
> > i take the disk to another E280R server to boot.
>
> I believe that the E280R is facl. FACL drives take some monkeying with
> to clone a boot disk. The following is my notes to clone a Blade 1000/2000
> boot disk:
>
> After cloning the harddrive do the following:
> These notes assume that the newly cloned drive is mounted on /a
> 1. rm  /a/etc/path_to_inst
> 2. rm /a/etc/path_to_inst.old
> 3. devfsadm -v -C -r /a
> 4. Then try to boot.
>
> If boot fails then take note as to what
> file system can't be fsck'd, boot net or cd, mount disk on /a,
> and edit /a/etc/vfstab to point to whatever location the
> fsck was complaining about.
> The diskdrives on the Blade 1000/2000 seem to magically change
> from /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 to /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 to /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0
> to whatever...
>
> >
> > I dont have the exact error messages now because i had to rebuild a
> > server very quickly and cannot afford a lot of time troubleshooting
> > this, so i just reinstalled the OS.   But basically the error messages
> > are indicating it didnt mount /usr patition successfully.  But i be
> > able to mount the user patition to a temp mount point once boot up from
> > cdrom fine.   and dont see anything wrong with that patition and i
> > fscked it fine too.
> >
> > thanks,
> > tony z.
> > Darren Dunham wrote:
> >> tony <zuodong@optonline.net> wrote:
> >>> i duplicated boot disks many times in the past with following command
> >>> and always work for me:
> >>> dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d00s2 bs=1024k
> >>> but yesterday when i tried to make a duplicate copy of 72GB boot disk,
> >>> it didnt work.
> >>> Of course, i made sure the two disks are identical in size and
> >>> partition, geometry.
> >>> The duplicated disk cannot boot fully.
> >> Did you swap the disks before trying to boot, or did you modify
> >> /etc/vfstab so it tries to mount from the copy?
> >>
> >> What are the messages you get from the boot?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
> >> Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
> >> Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
> >>          < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >
> >
>
>
> --
> ----------------------------------
> Randy Jones
> E-Mail: randy@jones.tri.net
> ----------------------------------