Emergency recovery media (diskettes and tapes) enable you to
recover your system if your hard disk experiences an
unrecoverable error. You should create emergency recovery
media immediately after you install your system, and again each
time you add or change system hardware and software.
To ensure that you always have a set of emergency recovery
media and data backups, we strongly recommend that you:
Create emergency recovery diskettes and tapes immediately
after installing and configuring your system.
If you install additional system or application software
at a later time, create new emergency recovery disks and tapes.
Back up your system on a regular basis (daily or weekly).
The length between backups is correlated to the amount of possible data
loss. If you back up your system each day, you can only lose up to
one day's data. If you only back up your system once a month, up to
one month's worth of data might be lost if your hardware fails.
The emergency recovery diskettes contain a small, bootable
version of UnixWare 7 from which you can boot your system.
The emergency recovery tapes contain an image of
critical UnixWare 7 filesystems. If you have the UnixWare 7
NetWare Services product installed and configured, the tapes
also contain an image of the NetWare Directory Services
(NDS) master partitions and NetWare SYS:
volume defined on your system.
By first booting your system with the emergency diskettes and
then restoring it from the emergency tapes, you restore
all the system software, filesystems, and NDS partitions
that existed when you created the diskettes and tapes.
NOTE:
If your system does not have a tape drive, you should still
create emergency recovery disks and then back up the
entire system onto other media or across the network by
using SCO ARCserve®/Open from Cheyenne® or the cpio command.
See
SCO ARCserve/Open from Cheyenne
and the
cpio(1)
manual page for more information.
Performing regular system backups ensures that data added to
your system after the creation of the emergency recovery media
can also be restored. Data created after the most recent backup
may be lost if your hard disk fails.
The system owner can back up the entire system on a regular basis.
Individual users without owner privileges can perform backups
of their own directories.
To ensure that you back up not only data but also
any extended file attributes (such as privileges, ACLs,
and NetWare file attributes), use SCO ARCserve/Open from Cheyenne
or cpio(1).
See
SCO ARCserve/Open from Cheyenne
and the
cpio(1)
manual page for more information.
Creating emergency recovery diskettes
To create emergency recovery disks:
Use the
format(1M)
command to create two formatted diskettes. For example, this command
creates a formatted, 1.44MB diskette in the primary diskette drive:
format -v /dev/rdsk/f03ht
Label the diskettes with the name of the system, date created,
and their name and number. For example:
mymachine mymachine
30 January 1998 30 January 1998
Emergency Recovery Emergency Recovery
Diskette 1 Diskette 2
NOTE:
Emergency recovery disks are customized for a particular system and
only work on that system.
Log in to the system console as root. To switch from
the graphical environment, press <Ctrl><Alt><F1>.
Make sure there are no active users on the system. Enter:
who
If root is the only user logged in, bring the
system to single-user mode with this command:
shutdown -y -g0 -i1
If other users are listed, bring the system to single-user
mode with this command:
shutdown -y -g300 -i1
The -g300 flag in this command allows users 5 minutes
(300 seconds) to close their files and log out. A broadcast
message from root provides warnings that the system
is coming down.
After the system enters single-user mode,
determine in which filesystem you will create the recovery media.
The filesystem must contain at least 30MB of free space.
To determine which filesystems have enough space, enter:
/sbin/dfspace
For example, you might see:
/ : Disk space: 195.10 MB of 429.00 MB available (45.48%)
/stand : Disk space: 5.82 MB of 9.99 MB available (58.28%)
/home : Disk space: 238.86 MB of 479.00 MB available (49.87%)
/tmp : Disk space: 7.98 MB of 8.00 MB available (99.85%)
/var/tmp : Disk space: 9.99 MB of 8.99 MB available (90.00%)
In this example, only the root (/) and /home
filesystems have enough space to be used for creating the emergency
recovery media.
Enter:
/sbin/emergency_disk -dpathname diskette
pathname is the filesystem you selected.
diskette is the diskette drive where you
will insert the diskette (either diskette1 or
diskette2).
The following example creates an emergency recovery diskette on
the first diskette drive, using the /home filesystem as its
working directory:
/sbin/emergency_disk -d /home diskette1
When prompted, insert the first formatted disk into the
appropriate diskette drive.
Creating each emergency recovery disk takes about fifteen minutes.
When prompted, remove the first diskette,
insert the second diskette and press <Enter>.
When prompted, remove the diskette from the diskette drive.
Store the emergency recovery disks in a secure location.
After you create the emergency recovery diskettes, do one of the following:
If your system does not have a tape drive, then you should now
create a full system backup onto the network or other media.
Creating emergency recovery tapes
Emergency recovery tapes allow you to restore your system and its
data to the configuration stored on the media.
NOTE:
If you have installed the NetWare Services package,
you may need to run the Directory Services Install
utility before beginning this procedure.
If you are creating emergency recovery media immediately after
installing your system, you do not need to run this utility.
If, however, you add NDS partitions and NetWare volumes after
installation, you must run Directory Services Install
so that these partitions and data can be backed up.
For more information, see
``Installing NetWare Directory Services''
in SCOhelp.
To create emergency recovery tapes:
Locate and label tapes for this procedure. Include the system
name, date the tapes were created, and sequence number.
The number of tapes needed varies according to the
size and configuration of your system.
Log in to the system console as root. To switch from
the graphical environment, press <Ctrl><Alt><F1>.
If the system is already in single-user mode, skip to step 5.
Otherwise, make sure there are no active users on the system. Enter:
who
If root is the only user logged in, bring the
system to single-user mode with this command:
shutdown -y -g0 -i1
If other users are listed, bring the system to single-user
mode with this command:
shutdown -y -g300 -i1
The -g300 flag in this command allows users 5 minutes
(300 seconds) to close their files and log out. A broadcast
message from root provides warnings that the system
is coming down.
At the single-user prompt (#),
insert the first emergency recovery tape into
the appropriate cartridge tape drive.
Create the emergency recovery tapes using either step a or step b.
Use this step only if all the conditions below are true:
you have only one hard disk installed on your system
the tape drive you are using has the capacity to back up
your entire hard disk on one tape
(if you have the UnixWare 7 NetWare Services product installed)
the NetWare server on your system is the only server on the network
Enter:
/sbin/emergency_rec -e tape
tape is the tape drive location of your inserted
tape (ctape1 or ctape2). The -e
option tells emergency_rec to back up the entire
primary hard disk. Wait for this command to finish processing
and then go to Step 7.
Use this step for a multiple hard disk system or a
single disk system that does not meet the conditions in Step 6a.
Enter:
/sbin/emergency_rec tape
tape is the tape drive location of your
inserted tape (ctape1 or ctape2).
The emergency_rec command (without the -e option) backs up:
all UnixWare 7 partitions on your primary hard disk
the /home, /home2, /var,
and /usr filesystems from
the secondary hard disk, if they exist there
the SYS: volume of the NetWare Server,
if NetWare Services is installed
any master NDS partitions defined on your system,
if NetWare Directory Services is installed
NOTE:
The emergency_rec command does not back up any
other UnixWare 7 filesystems on the secondary disk, nor any filesystem
on additional hard disks, nor any additional NetWare server volumes
defined on any disk.
You are prompted to insert additional tapes as needed.
Remove the last tape from the tape drive.
Store the emergency recovery tapes with the emergency recovery floppy
disks in a secure location.
Handling tape error messages
The following error messages may appear when you create emergency
recovery tapes:
Cannot determine mountpoint for device <device_name>
This message appears when a slice cannot be associated with a filesystem.
This prevents the indicated slice from being backed up or restored.
Duplicate mountpoint <mnt_pt> detected with device <device_name>
This message appears when the determination of what filesystems the slices
are associated with produces a duplicate. Common causes of this
error include using old style device names (dev/dsk/1s1
instead of /dev/dsk/c0b0t1d0s1), or having entries
commented out in /etc/vfstab. If you encounter this message,
you must fix the problem before making the emergency recovery tape.
After creating emergency recovery tapes
After you create the emergency recovery tapes, either:
any UnixWare 7 filesystems not on the primary hard disk
the /home, /home2, and /usr filesystems,
if they are defined on a disk other than the primary or secondary hard disk
any NetWare volumes other than SYS:
(including any defined on the primary hard disk)
The easiest way to do this is to make a full system backup.
Then, you can begin a regular schedule of incremental backups.
You must use the cpio(1) command to
perform these backups if you want to retain privilege and
NetWare-related data on the files you back up.
Recovering an unusable system
If your system will not boot, your system software is
corrupted beyond repair, or your hard disk has been
reformatted or replaced, you can use your emergency recovery
media and incremental backups to restore your system.
Before attempting to restore the system, ensure that your
motherboard, hard disks, memory, and peripherals are in good
working order. Do so by running any hardware diagnostics
included with your system by the manufacturer. While this
recovery procedure restores all the system software, applications,
and data on the recovery media to your hard disk, it
does not ensure proper operation of the system hardware.
To recover the system:
Place the first emergency recovery diskette in the primary
(boot) diskette drive, and reboot your system.
If you mistakenly inserted the wrong disk,
replace the current disk with the correct emergency
disk and repeat this procedure.
If you want to use this disk, enter the license number from
the Certificate of License and Authenticity for your system.
Correct the system damage or restore data from the emergency
recovery tapes.
The emergency recovery main menu provides options to:
start a limited UnixWare 7 operating system command-line shell
restore data from emergency recovery tapes
mount or unmount all filesystems (if UnixWare 7
data is accessible on the hard disk)
reboot the system
Use the up or down arrow keys or the <Tab> key to select the
desired choice and then press <Enter>.
If you select to invoke an emergency shell, a shell prompt
is displayed and the following commands are available:
cat(1)
chroot(1M)
cpio(1)
date(1)
dd(1M)
echo(1)
edvtoc(1M)
fdisk(1M)
find(1)
fsck(1M)
grep(1)
ksh(1)
labelit(1M)
ln(1)
ls(1)
mkdir(1)
mkfs(1)
mount(1M)
prtvtoc(1M)
rm(1)
stty(1)
vi(1)
Use these commands to investigate and fix the problem.
To exit the shell and return to the main menu, press <Esc>.
NOTE:
Some of these commands (for example, the find command)
are limited-function shell aliases for the regular UnixWare 7 commands.
If the hard disk is functional and mounted, you can execute the
full-function commands from the hard disk by specifying the
full path of the command (for example, /mnt/usr/bin/find).
If you select to reinstall your system, insert the emergency
recovery tapes when prompted. Wait for the processing of the
last tape to complete before going to the next step.
If you select to mount filesystems, the UnixWare 7 filesystems
are mounted. If you then invoke the emergency shell, you can
access all the UnixWare 7 commands on your system. If your hard
disk is severely damaged, this option may not be available.
If you select to unmount filesystems, the UnixWare 7 filesystems
are unmounted. If your hard disk is severely damaged,
this option may not be available.
You can choose to reboot your system. If you used the
emergency recovery shell to repair your system,
remove the second emergency recovery disk from the
disk drive before selecting the option to reboot your system.
Remove the emergency recovery disk. If you
restored the system from the emergency recovery
tapes, you can remove the last tape from the tape drive at this time.
Press <Esc> to reboot your system.
You may notice error messages similar to the following:
UX: initprivs: WARNING: File ``file'' fails validation: entry ignored
UX: initprivs: WARNING: X entries ignored in ``/etc/security/tcb/privs''
This is because the date stamp for the inode was changed during the
restore process.
You can fix these errors after your system boots into multi-user mode,
by logging in as root and entering the following command:
/etc/security/tools/setpriv -x
If your system has the Netware Services (nws)
package installed, you are prompted
to re-insert the recovery tape after the system reboots,
to complete the restoration of the NetWare file attributes.
If you are running NetWare Directory Services on your system
as part of the UnixWare 7 NetWare Services product,
there are additional steps you need to follow to restore
NDS if your system is part of a multiple-server NDS tree.
These steps are necessary to avoid creating problems on the
other servers on your network. For full information regarding
restoring NDS for the UnixWare 7 NetWare Services product, see the
Installation Handbook for that product.
If you created any full or incremental backups of your system
after creating the emergency recovery tapes,
restore those backups using the restore method corresponding
to the backup method you used to create them.
For example, if you created backups using the
cpio(1)
command,
use the same method to restore the archive.
See
SCO ARCserve/Open from Cheyenne
and the
cpio(1)
manual page for more information.