UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello folks,

I have a sun sparcstation 20, I would like to upgrade one of the hard disks to a larger one. The one I would like to upgrade only contains user data. Here are my thoughts:

1. Backup the specific file system
2. Replace the disk with the larger disk
3. Create a new file system
4. Restore the user data

I would have liked to do a disk to disk copy but I am max on scsi devices so I will use tape.

Questions are:

1. I purchased a used Seagate ST19171/WC that supposedly came out of a sun box. I have read some threads here stating that it seems difficult to get generic hard disks to work with sun systems. Is this true and anyone know how to overcome this?

2. Using a backup utility called "Mr. Backup" is there anything special about the restore? Since the file systems will be different is there anything specific that I will need to do to get this to work. Or should I use the sun utilities tar /cpio?

All help would be greatly appreciated,

Don

Hi there,

I never had any problems with non-Sun hard-drives. By the way, Sun uses other's manufacture's Hard Drive, such as Seagate. Maybe you will be asked about number of heads, , number of cilinders, etc. Be sure to have that in hands (use format to verify).
About the backup, I recommend you to use ufsdump with the filesystem unmounted and after fsck, to ensure file system integrity. if you use veritas, the command is vxdump. note that with then is better to do a backup with the filesystem unmounted.

PS:
/usr/sbin/ufsdump 0f <device> <file-system mount point or device>

HTT

Here is how I upgrade hard disks:

NOTE: This works only for partitions that do not have boot information !!!!!!

(1) Install the new )raw) hard disk on the system bus. Keep the old HD you wish to replace in place and operating as normal.

(2) Format the new drive, create a new filesystem and mount it.

(3) If step (2) goes OK then copy all the files from the old drive to the new drive using the cp command that preserves all permissions and symbolic links.

(4) After (3) is finished (might take some time for a lot of files); check to see if all is OK.

(5) Change fstab (the filesystem table) to mount the new drive in place of the old drive and mount the old drive is a new (temporary place).

(6) Reboot the system.

If you have done (1 - 5) correctly, the system will reboot with the new super drive in place of the old drive. The old drive will be mounted somewhere else. After all is well, you can decide what to do with the old drive.

NOTE: This works only for partitions that do not have boot information !!!!!!

If you are replacing the disk with boot sectors, this will not work. That requires more work