> Aloha. I am trying to clone a Sun Ultra 60 running Solaris 8. I
> wanted to go this route since both machines have identical hardware and
> both will be running webservers, etc. I figured it would be smarter
> (and less time consuming) to build, patch, and lock down one system and
> then clone it. Here are the details: neither machine has a tape drive
> or floppy but both have network connectivity and each system has 1 hdd
> with 5 partitions (/, /usr, /usr/local, /var, /opt).
> I have used ufsdump/ufsrestore with files instead of tape drives (so I
> know how to get around not having a tape). I also know that you can
> use "dd". However, because the system did not have any os loaded, I
> created a flash archive (flarcreate) and was looking at using Web Start
> Flash to install that image. Unfortunately Web Start 3.0 on release
> 11/00 does not include the capability to install from a flash archive.
> I have only been doing this for 5 months so I do not know all of the
> tricks yet (but I plan to take a SUN course sometime in the future).
> Please provide any instructions for approaches that have worked for you.
> thanks,
> angelo
Well, it sounds like you are off to a good start! I like the methods that you
describe and agree with the methodology. The ability to install from a flash
archive is in Solaris 9. I dont know about an earlier release of Solaris 8.
For installing multiple systems that are identical it is probably best to
stick with the old ufsdump/ufsrestore approach. It is a rock solid method,
slow, but completely reliable. The Ultra 60 has two internal disk slots, so
that would allow you to do a disk to disk ufsdump and ufsrestore while being
booted from the CDROM. That would work well so long as you remember to
install the bootblk. Here is what I would suggest for your situation :
1) finish off the configuration and patching of your Ultra 60.
2) shut the system down and then install the bootdisk for the
second system into the second disk slot of the U60.
3) boot from the CDROM with boot options "boot -srv"
4) use prtvtoc to format the new disk with the exact same config
as the primary disk. Thus :
# prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 | fmthard -s - /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0
5) now you need to install the bootblk from the primary disk, or
from the CDROM. I recommend that you stick with the primary
disk as the generic bootblk from the CDROM is, well, different.
I leave it as an exercise for more educated c.u.s people to explain
the difference.
Let's assume that your /usr filesystem is on s2 of c0t0d0
# mount -F ufs -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s2 /mnt
# installboot /mnt/platform/`uname -m`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0
# umount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s2
6) now use newfs to create your filesystems on the new disk and then
ufsdump the existing filesystems onto it. You can even increase the
reserved percentage of filesystem space on the new filesystems if you
want.
Dennis
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