Very Computer

Hi,
        I had big plans to mirror my root and swap partitions,
so that I'd have an up-to-date spare should one burn up, and also
so that I could backup without rebooting into single user mode.
All was well in my implementation until I got to the section on
online backups in the Disksuite Answerbook, and there's a single
line in a box that says "Note - Do not perform this procedure on
the root file system."  Well, I'm disappointed, and I wish I knew
why I shouldn't attempt such a procedure.

This is Disksuite 4.0 with Solaris 2.5 on a 5/110, if that's at
all relevant.  Anyone got any ideas?  And is anyone using this
method for their backup policy?  I really hate the idea of
downtime just for a backup.  And our customers probably wouldn't
understand...

--
/******************************************************************
 *  From the SPARCbook of:  Peter James Naylor  ##################*
 *#######################   Partner, Supernal Technologies, Inc.  *

 ******************************************************************/

Quote:> Hi,
>    I had big plans to mirror my root and swap partitions,
> so that I'd have an up-to-date spare should one burn up, and also
> so that I could backup without rebooting into single user mode.
> All was well in my implementation until I got to the section on
> online backups in the Disksuite Answerbook, and there's a single
> line in a box that says "Note - Do not perform this procedure on
> the root file system."  Well, I'm disappointed, and I wish I knew
> why I shouldn't attempt such a procedure.

> This is Disksuite 4.0 with Solaris 2.5 on a 5/110, if that's at
> all relevant.  Anyone got any ideas?  And is anyone using this
> method for their backup policy?  I really hate the idea of
> downtime just for a backup.  And our customers probably wouldn't
> understand...

If you drop one side of the mirror, then use the raw disk (s2 - the entire disk)
that you just dropped in a dd you can then use this to restore back in the
future, then re-mirror once finished.

eg if /dev/md/rdsk/d29 is the half of the mirror you dropped, and this is on
/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0, then use dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s2 of=/dev/rmt/0hn bs=48k or
whatever, to do the dump.

Best Regards,

Brian Craigie

Unix Sys Admin

My views are not necessarily those of my employers...

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