using installation tape for disaster recovery

[Steven Parkes]

In article <7033 at dog.ee.lbl.gov>, envbvs at epb2.lbl.gov (Brian V. Smith) writes:
|> In article <9009171852.AA03774 at garnet.berkeley.edu>,
|> rusty at GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU (rusty wright) writes:
|> |> I'm trying to reinstall my system from dump 0 tapes using the
|> |> installation tape.  (In case you're wondering why, I tried to install
|> |> Ultrix 4.0 on my MicroVAX II/GPX and found out after it was too late
|> |> that 4.0 won't work on an RD53.) 

|> Where does it say that Ultrix 4.0 won't work on an RD53?
|> To quote the Release notes, page 1-29, section 1.9:
|> "All hardware components supported in the previous release (ULTRIX-32,
|> Version 3.1) remain supported in ULTRIX Version 4.0."

Yea, but in the release notes it says that the RD53 is supported as a `data
device only.'  RD53's are pretty small -- the whole /, /usr, and swap won't
fit on one disk, at least not with the install script.

I did the same thing to install on a GPX/II -- I dumped the root of a system
I'd just installed (they share /usr anyway.)  The way I got around no-newfs
was to get a tape and cat the appropriate files onto it for another system
(newfs, /etc/disktab, the proper boot directory) ... sort of a pain, but
more reliable than trying to figure out what set of options newfs calls
mkfs with.

So why doesn't somebody (I hate SPRing) write an spr asking to have newfs,
disktab, and the boot directory put onto the ram filesystem.  Also, what about
rsh?  On the IBM/RT under AOS the way you do an install is to install the ram
filesystem and rsh a dump/restore to an installed machine.  Worked great.

And finally, has anyone played with RIS?  We don't use it -- our of our machines
have local root and swap and doubling up on software (doc's say you can't
share with the server, right?).  What I'm wondering is, can I install just
enough RIS stuff to allow me to boot a ram filesystem over the network.
The way it is now, I have to move our scsi tk50 from machine to machine.
I could spare the space to boot a ram filesystem, but I don't want to
double the space for all the other subsets.


steven parkes ---------------------------------------
University of Illinois Coordinated Science Laboratory
steven at pacific.csl.uiuc.edu -------------------------