![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
CHAPTER 21 Disaster Recovery: SCO® UnixWare 7
The UnixWare 7 BareMetal (or Air-Bag®) is a comprehensive crash recovery solution for UnixWare 7 servers. You can restore a fully installed and configured system from a full crash in less than 20 minutes. The totally automated features automatically expands your partition tables and slice tables to the size of a new and larger replacement hard disk. This product is totally automated and requires no knowledge of UnixWare 7. For Unix experts, the Experts menu provides key features such as CMOS restore, fixing a VSFS panic, BTLD support, and Hard Disk Single User mode. The Slice Manager will be a welcome relief to those experts struggling with edvtoc.
The UnixWare 7 Air-Bag can create a bootable CD-ROM that can fully recover your system at anytime. Since 80% of crashes are software induced, RAID and mirroring protect you from only 20% of failures. And even these fail due to power surges, RFI, and controller failure. So the UnixWare 7 Air-Bag is a comprehensive and necessary adjunct to RAID and mirroring.
Diagnostic/Repair Features
· Comprehensive Diagnostics and Confidence tester
· Ability to view ISA/PCMCIA/PCI/EISA cards that are recognized by UnixWare
· Filesystem Status Report (CLEAN, MOUNTED, DIRTY, CORRUPT, NEEDS LOG REPLAY)
· Can fix "Disk not Sane" fatal booting error message that otherwise renders UnixWare unbootable.
Restore Features
· Supports Loadable Modules from link kit
· Support Boot Time Loadable Modules (BTLD)
· Proportional expansion of slice table when going from small disk to larger one
· ROOT only restore
· STAND only restore
· SINGLE FILESYSTEM only restore (for a corrupted filesystem)
· Multiple controller support (IDE, SCSI)
· Ability to switch controllers on the fly
· Supports Compaq IDA Hard Disk Mirroring
Diskette Generation Features
· Ability to rebuild/reset your UnixWare 7 Device Database to a correct state
· Diskettes can remain WRITE PROTECTED after they are generated - ensuring against accidental corruption.
· Can create a bootable CD-ROM with the full Air-Bag suite
Unix Experts Features
· Shell environment is extremely robust with most need utilities and vi
· Shell environment help facility
· Online help when booted from A1 and A2
· Resource Manager/Hardware Configuration Utility
· Hard Disk Single User Mode allows you to add packages, relink the kernel, add modules as if you were booted from the hard disk in INITSTATE=S mode
· Flexible drive name mapping to handle the most complex of controller/drive switches and assist
in supporting mirrors and Online Data Manager
· Can change resource manager parameters on-the-fly for any card (Mini DCU)
Slice Manager Features
· Very easy to use interface to VTOC table (without using edvtoc)
· Delete/Merge/Enlarge Filesystems
· Built in Slice Manager allows full control over slices and filesystems
· Slice Manager can run stand-alone to help you configure disks
· A newly created filesystem is automatically mounted when you reboot
· Auto Merge of new filesystems created into /etc/vfstab on hard disk
· Selection of units (blocks, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes or cylinders)
· Variety of sorting options
· Supports vxfs, s5, ufs, sfs, bfs, AFS filesystems
Miscellaneous Features
· Facility for making /stand and /etc first two directories on backup tapes
· Dial-in modem support
· Diskettes can remain WRITE PROTECTED at all times; ensuring against accidental corruption
· Online help when booted from A1 and A2
Time Saving Features
· Fast Boot option to bypass the loading of the A2 if /stand is intact
· TURBO boot option to boot in less than 20 seconds
· Used as disk optimizer, it improves performance by 40-60%
21.1 Concepts
The use of the UnixWare 7 Air-Bag is quite simple. After installation, you generate two diskettes, called the A1 and A2 diskettes. These diskettes are used to boot a miniaturized version of the UnixWare 7 operating system. After generating the diskettes, you boot and test to be sure that both the hard-drive and the tape drive can be accessed. It is a good idea to verify the tape. It is also a good idea to do the diagnostic confidence test to be sure everything is working properly.
From this, you use the menu system to do a restore of the system. There are many options available and this chapter will discuss these further. It is best to generate two complete sets of diskettes just for safety sake in case they are damaged. When you do crash, you boot from the A1 and A2 and follow the instructions to recover your system. You must have both a master backup tape and an incremental backup in order to restore.
It is best to coordinate the backup of your server, such that the master backup is the first backup on the tape. This makes it much easier when restoring to know that the master backup is on the front of the tape. Alternatively, you should have your weekly reports printed so that you will have a paper copy of which dataset on a tape contains your master backup. Normally the master backup is kept first on a tape. However, it is possible that it could be appended if that tape contained the only other master backup of the server.
21.2 Installation
You must have either the original UnixWare 7 install diskette or CD in order to complete the installation. You will be prompted for either the diskette or the CD during the install. This is required one time.
The commands to install the product are:
tar xvfb /dev/ux7_ abg.tar.
/tmp/init.uairbag7
If you received this product on a diskette replace ux7_abg.tar with /dev/fd0. Keep in mind, the UnixWare 7 Air-Bag distribution is a separate download from the web site or FTP site. It does not automatically unfold as part of the Backup Professional server distribution.
The installation can proceed with other users on the system.
21.3 Creating the Air-Bag Diskettes
You can create the diskettes either from the Administration utility (bpmenu) using the [Misc->Crash Recovery] menu or by running the script /etc/airbag from a console screen. You should be in multi user mode when you create the A1 and A2 diskettes so that the system configuration under normal circumstances can be captured and then later restored. The main creation menu appears in Figure 99 on page 289.
FIGURE 99. Main Menu![]()
21.3.1 Setup and Configuration
It is very important to properly setup and configure all the options before proceeding to generate the A1 and A2 diskettes. This generally only needs to be done one time and, following this, the diskette generation should proceed smoothly. You can set configurable items such as the name of the tape device, the block size, the no rewind tape device name, the SCSI low-level block size, printing options, whether you want the generated diskettes to be used for Backup Professional or CTAR, and the different filesystem modules and controller support that you would like included on the diskette.
FIGURE 100. Setup and Configuration Menu![]()
21.3.2 When to Generate Fresh Diskettes
You should generate fresh diskettes if you make significant changes to your hardware. This includes changing the number of disk drives or moving disk drives from one controller to another.
21.3.3 Creating the A1 Diskette (Boot Disk)
When you create the A1 diskette, you can choose to have it verified. The verify does a bit level verification of all the files on the A1 diskette making sure that they are identical to that on the hard-drive. It
is certainly a good idea to do this the first several times that you generate the A1 diskette to be sure
that your hardware is working properly.
If you have the ROOTFS_MEMFS=YES in the MKAIRBAG.CFG configuration file, then additional information is added to the /stand filesystem to enable an extremely quick boot into the Air-Bag Menu System without the aid of either CD-ROM or floppy diskettes. This saves quite a bit of time and can be used for system maintenance. However, this mode cannot be used if you had a complete and full hard disk crash. If there is corruption on a few of your filesystems, but not the /stand filesystem, this mode allows you to get into the Air-Bag Menu System without the use of the Air-Bag diskettes or a CD-ROM. You can boot into this mode within seconds, fix the problem and then return to a normal usage.
21.3.4 Handling Space Problems on A1 Diskette
If there is difficulty creating the A1 diskette due to lack of space, Air-Bag first tries using an alternate method. If the alternate method fails then you must resort to techniques described in this section.
If you run out of space creating the A1 diskette, you can increase the value of ZIPMEM. You will need a computer with a large amount of memory. Try gradually increasing ZIPMEM, starting with a number larger than 60k. This technique also works for space problems with the A2 diskette.
Again, add this parameter to the /etc/airbag file.
ZIPMEM=70k ; export ZIPMEM
Then see if you can boot the A1 diskette and that it prompts for an A2 diskette. If so, then you are okay. If you see the message
memfs.fs I/O error or truncated
then you cannot go any higher and must save space using a different technique. This ZIPMEM parameter has been tested with values as high as using 300k.
It is possible to shuffle files that would normally be on the A1 diskette to the A2 diskette. This is not for the faint of heart. You can edit the file /usr/cactus/airbag/files/memfs.proto and remove some files. Most of these are critical to the boot process so be careful. The files ps, psid and partsize are good candidates. We suggest you contact our technical support staff for details. Any files that are removed should be added to the list in /usr/cactus/airbag/A2files.aux.
21.3.5 Creating the A2 Diskette (Root Filesystem)
The first phase of creating the A2 diskette is to generate a list of all the filesystems and mount points and filesystem types on your system. This excludes NFS mounted filesystems. This list is the key list that Air-Bag uses for regenerating filesystems in the event of the crash. When the list is displayed, please verify the list and be sure that this is accurate.
Air-Bag displays the hardware devices including all the hard disks that are found on the system. It gets this information from the device database that UnixWare keeps. In many cases, the device database can contain excessive and/or redundant listings of hardware. This is especially true in the early phases of setting up your system, adding and removing drives, or shuffling drives from one controller to another frequently.
If the display of the hard-drives does not seem accurate, it is best to reset your UnixWare device database. You can do this from the utilities menu, and it involves two stages. One stage is done and then a reboot is required. Therefore, it is suggested you only do this when you can quickly shut down and reboot the system without effecting other users.
All of the critical information about your hardware is saved to the A2 diskette so that your hardware can be reconstructed in the event of a crash. This allows Air-Bag to take your old settings and filesystems and apply them to any new hard-drive that you add to the system to replace those that crash. In addition, the CMOS settings are saved so that these can be restored in the event your CMOS battery goes dead and you do not remember all the settings. Air-Bag will add necessary filesystem modules as well. In addition, auxiliary files contained in /usr/cactus/airbagA2Aux.files are added to the diskette.
21.3.6 Conditionally Added Modules
If during setup and configuration you specified that additional host bust adapter drivers were needed, these are also added during the creation of the A2 diskette. You use this if you desire to switch primary hard-drive controller types in the future. For example, if you decided to switch from IDE to a SCSI driver such as Adaptec (adsc) you could add these modules during the configuration setup and they will be added to the A2 diskette. When you boot from the A1 and A2 diskettes, these modules are automatically loaded and linked into the kernel so they will be available to control and recognize any hardware that you may be dealing with.
21.3.7 Adding Custom Files to the A2 Diskette
You can add filenames to the file /usr/cactus/airbag/A2Aux.files. You should list the full pathname of the file on the hard-drive. If you want it in a different location when booted from the floppy diskettes, use the keyword "as" followed by the new path.
For example, to put Bronson, a binary file editor, on the A2 diskette in /sbin, add the following line to the A2Aux.files:
/bin/bronson as /sbin/bronson
21.3.8 Handling Space Problems on A2 Diskette
If you run out of space creating the A2 diskette you can remove some of the filesystem modules that may not be needed. By default, Air-Bag includes support for
· bfs - Boot Filesystem
· vxfs - Veritas Filesystem
· ufs - Unix Filesystem
· sfs - Secure Filesystem
· s5 - System V Filesystem
The variable that you must modify is ADDL_FS_MODULES in /usr/cactus/airbag/MKAIRBAG.CFG.
Most implementations need only bfs and vxfs. Please keep in mind that the "Load BTLD module on the fly" feature requires the s5 filesystem module. You can specify which modules you want with the Configure/Setup option off of the main menu.
Also, take a look at the ADDL_HBA_MODULES variable. You may have specified some additional HBA (Host Bus Adapter) modules that really are not necessary.
Both the ADDL_FS_MODULES and ADDL_HBA_MODULES variables are modified when you select choice "7) Configure/Reset Airbag Options" from the Air-Bag Diskette Generator main menu.
To save additional space, you can edit /usr/cactus/airbag/A2Aux.files and remove the entry /usr/bin/vi.
21.3.9 Completion
At the completion of the creation of the Air-Bag diskettes, you are notified if any errors were encountered. If they were, you have an opportunity to view these messages on the screen. Some may be serious and others are simply warning messages. The copy of the most recent errors are kept in the file /tmp/airbag.err. You can later refer to this at your convenience.
Regardless of whether or not error messages were encountered, you must test the diskettes! Never assume that they will work perfectly without testing. Your data is too valuable to risk.
You should set the write-protect tab on both A1 and A2 diskettes. Additionally, it is a good to generate duplicate copies of these diskettes in case they are accidentally corrupted. The utilities menu of the main Air-Bag creation menu has quite a few nice features. One is that you can use the Slice Manager directly from the Air-Bag menu to create, modify, and add slices to any drive. Of course you must be careful that other users are not using the drives while this is taking place.
21.3.10 Utility Menu
A very nice feature is the ability to create a backup image of A1 and A2 floppies on the hard-drive. The beauty of this feature is if for some reason you lose the A1 and A2 floppies, they can be reconstructed from the copies that are on the hard-drive. The reason is the hard-drive will be backed up to tape. Therefore, the tape can be restored to another system and the Air-Bag menu run to regenerate your A1 and A2 diskettes. Dealers and VARs especially find this useful since they now have a master copy of each of their client's systems in case of emergency.
Another nice feature allows you to put the /stand filesystem and link kit first on your backup tapes. This is a useful feature since the /stand filesystem and especially the link kit needs to be restored quite often. The link kit can easily become corrupted under UnixWare's rendering the generation of a new kernel untenable. Restoring the complete link kit fixes this. Having this link kit first on a tape allows this to happen quite quickly.
Additionally, the options for rebuilding the UnixWare 7 device database are in this section. Please keep in mind you should not start this process unless you have the ability to shut the system down and reboot. After stage-1 of the rebuild is complete, you must promptly shut down, reboot and run stage-2.
Also from this section, you can make a bootable CD-ROM image. Please see the release notes for more details on this.
21.4 Booting Options
21.4.1 Jump Start Booting
This feature will save you valuable time by allowing you to boot into the Air-Bag Menu System without the A1 or A2 diskettes.
Here is how it works. Let us say there is software corruption of the hard disk or you keep getting a vxfs_mount Kernel PANIC message when you try to boot.You would like to mount your data partition and do a last minute backup before you restore the bad root hard disk. You have lost your A1 and A2 diskettes or do not want to take the time to boot from them.
You start the booting process as normal. As soon as you see the UnixWare 7 logo, press the <SPACEBAR> and shortly thereafter you will see the boot command prompt. Type two commands followed by a b to boot.
The following shows what the session will look like. Keep in mind, the string "[boot]" is produced by the computer and is the boot prompt.
[boot] ROOTFS=MEMFS
[boot] BOOTPROG=AIRBAG
[boot] b
Do not forget the b, this forces a reboot. You boot directly into the Air-Bag Menu System just as if you had booted from the A1 and A2 diskettes. However, the load time is measured in seconds, not minutes.
You then can perform whatever administration tasks you wish. Or you can use the Air-Bag Menu System to fully recover your system. You can also make some salvage backups of critical data slices.
21.4.2 Fast Boot (A1 only)
After booting from the A1, you see the critical modules load. Following this, you are given the option of fast boot (f option) or inserting the A2. You can perform the fast boot option if the /stand filesystem has not been corrupted. This saves several minutes of time and it has the same effect as loading the A2 diskette.
21.5 Testing the A1 and A2 Diskettes
It is imperative that you test the A1 and A2 diskettes after they are generated. This will ensure that they were created properly without hidden corruption and that all drivers were properly loaded to allow access to both the hard disk and the tape drive.
The UnixWare 7 A1 and A2 diskettes are designed to always be WRITE PROTECTED. This avoids corruption of the diskettes while in use due to hardware/software problems or turning the machine off suddenly. Remember to set the WRITE PROTECT tabs after generating the diskettes.
Once booted from the A1 and A2 diskettes, you should take a tape and verify it to make sure the tape drive works properly from the crash diskettes. Select the following two choices from the Air-Bag main menu:
5) Diagnostic/Confidence Test
9) Verify Air-Bag Integrity (Test Tape and hard-drive Accessibility)
21.6 Utilities
FIGURE 101. Utilities Menu![]()
21.7 The AIR-BAG Main Menu System
Air-Bag is designed to be used from a comprehensive menu system called the Air-Bag Menu System. From the Air-Bag main menu there are two additional menus. They are the Air-Bag Utilities Menu and the Air-Bag Unix Experts Menu. In this section we will describe the features of the Air-Bag Main Menu itself (Figure 102 on page 297).
FIGURE 102. Boot Main Menu![]()
21.7.1 Diagnostic/Confidence Test
Running this test should be the very first thing you do after creating the A1 and A2 diskettes. It checks all the boot straps and for accessibility of the hard-drive as well as a tape drive. See Figure 103 on page 298 for a sample view of the output. You must have a tape in the tape drive when running this test. Otherwise the test takes longer to run.
At the end of the diagnostics confidence test, the states of all filesystems are reported. In addition to accessibility, their status as to clean or dirty will be shown. This can give you a general idea of whether the system recognizes and can see each of the filesystems.
FIGURE 103. Diagnostics![]()
21.7.2 Single Filesystem Restore (ROOT,STAND,OTHER)
Use this choice if you need to only restore one single filesystem and do not want to modify the data on any of the other filesystems. This is excellent for restoring a corrupted data partition. It automatically excludes every other partition. You can restore the root filesystem, the /stand filesystem, or both the root and /stand filesystems from this menu system. Use this if the system itself becomes corrupt but your data partitions are intact.
21.7.3 Fully Automated Restore
This is probably the most versatile and easiest choice to use in the entire menu system with a simple keystroke and pressing [Enter] a few times, the entire root hard-drive will be restored and reconstructed. This works to either the same hard disk or a new hard disk. If the disk is new, all the filesystems are proportionately expanded up to the maximum allowed. For example, the /stand filesystem has a maximum limit of 128 megabytes. Some other filesystems have limitations as well. Following this, all the filesystems are mounted and you can proceed to do a full restore from the tape.
Keep in mind, this prepares the root hard-drive only, and does not prepare the secondary or tertiary drives. If these also need repair, you should first go to the utilities menu to select these drives and reconstruct their filesystems. Following this, go back to the fully automated restore and finish the process. When the fully automated restore runs, all the filesystems including those on the secondary and tertiary hard-drives are mounted and the data is restored from the tape unless you specifically exclude them.
21.7.4 Restore to Same Hard Disk, Step by Step
Use this when you have not replaced your root hard-drive but there has been some corruption. This does a step-by-step reconstruction of the filesystems on the selected hard disk. When you choose this selection you will proceed into the Slice Manager. From there you can add, delete, and merge filesystems and create new filesystems. When you use this choice you can see the old information by pressing <CTRL ALT F3> or <CTRL ALT F4>. This shows you your old filesystem setup and also your old slice tables. You can use this for your reference when constructing a new slice table.
21.7.5 Restoring to a New Partition or Hard Disk
Use this choice if you have replaced a hard-drive with a newer one of the same or larger size. This does a full reconstruction and regeneration of the needed filesystems for that particular drive.
21.7.6 Modem Technical Assistance Service
The Remote Modem Support Feature is designed to allow complete remote support of your crashed system via modem. The menu interface that is typically seen by the user at the console can be seen by a remote technician thousands of miles away. The remote technician can take full control of the system and rebuild your crashed system.
This allows your dealer to troubleshoot or rebuild your crashed or damaged system. Additionally, technical staff can provide emergency assistance for a fee. If there is a need to transfer additional utilities to your booted system, this can be accomplished since the receiving of a portion of the kermit protocol (tadpole) is automatically installed as part of the Remote Modem Support Feature. This allows full support without the hassle of on-sight travel.
In order to set up the Remote Modem Support Feature, several items should be in place when you generate your Air-Bag diskette:
1. You need to have a HAYES compatible modem attached to either serial port tty1a or tty2a (same as COM1 and COM2).
2. If you are using a serial mouse, you must know to which port (tty1a or tty2a) it is attached to since you cannot use this for your modem port.
3. Make sure that the serial ports are enabled in your system BIOS.
4. Check the value of the PORT environment variable in the MKAIRBAG.CFG configuration file. It should be set to the name of the modem port (/dev/tty1a or /dev/tty2a).
5. Check the value of the BAUD environment variable in the MKAIRBAG.CFG configuration file. This should be set to the default baud rate of your modem.
Default values can be changed even after you boot from the Air-Bag diskettes. However, it is better having matched the correct settings initially since in a crash situation it is time-consuming to adjust these settings or define the correct ones. Also the system is down and lost time means lost money.
You should test the Remote Modem Support Feature when you test your Air-Bag diskettes if you plan to use this feature. After you boot from the diskettes and test accessibility of your tape drive and hard-drive, select the modem support feature from the main menu.
The settings for the modem port and baud rate are shown at all times. Make sure these are corrected and then enable the modem from the menu. While doing this, watch the lights on the modem and make sure they flicker. You should see the receive lights flash and then the transmit (TR) light on the modem should stay on. When you disable the modem this light should go off. You should also see the auto-answer (AA) light go on if it was not already.
With the modem enabled, you should then have someone dial into your system to make sure they can connect and that they see a shell prompt that appears as:
Modem>
The remote user either types cactus or menu and they should see the full Air-Bag Main Menu. If the screen is cluttered with control characters, then the remote site is probably not using an ANSI terminal. In this case, the remote user exits the main menu, and runs the following from the prompt.
Modem> TERM=dumb; export TERM; menu
All the features including the Unix Expert's Menu are available to the remote technician.
If there is not a remote user available to test your modem, you should at least dial the modem telephone number manually and listen for an answer. The modem should answer on the second ring. If you hear the typical modem handshaking squeal, at least you know that the basic physical connection to the modem and modem drivers are intact.
When using the Remote Modem Support Feature, keep in mind that you cannot change the baud rate or port device name while the modem is enabled. You must first disable the modem for the menu, then change the baud rate or port device name.
The remote technician works independently of the user at the console and has his own private session. Therefore, the console user should not be using the Air-Bag Menu System while the remote technician is logged into the computer. The console user can disable the port while the remote technician is logged on, in order to log the remote technician off of the computer.
21.8 Utilities Menu
FIGURE 104. Boot Utilities![]()
21.8.1 Filesystem Status Report
You can quickly see a status of all the filesystems by running this report. This shows the name of the filesystem, its mount point, the type of the filesystem and the status. The status should show the word CLEAN. It also shows if the filesystem is mounted (which could occur if you have been working in the shell and forgot to unmount a filesystem.) Additionally, if it shows REGULAR FILE or NOT CREATED YET you can be confident that the slice that represents that filesystem is either damaged or not present in the slice table. You must then go into the Slice Manager and recreate that slice. Another status could be DIRTY - LOG REPLAY NEEDED. In this event, you will need to clean the filesystem which you can do from the Unix Experts Menu. Filesystem state might also show the word as CORRUPTED which generally means it is beyond repair. A detailed table of each status and its meaning can be found on Table 23 on page 306.
If a filesystem has a bad status, you can try to repair it using fsck from the Unix shell. If this fails, then it is best to go to the Slice Manager and recreate it.
21.8.2 Adjusting Filesystem Sizes
Filesystem sizes can be changed using the Slice Manager. In addition, the filesystem type can also be adjusted. See "Slice Manager" on page 305.
21.8.3 Hard Disk Parameter Information
In some cases, the hard disk parameters such as the cylinders, heads, and sectors are not correct. Additionally, you may wish to specify a different geometry so that the UnixWare partition geometry matches that of other partitions. Furthermore, you can use this section to adjust the disk stamp. The disk stamp is a set of twelve ASCII character that is a unique disk identifier. Most of the time these letters are random and if you wish to use a name which has more meaning to yourself, this is available to you. Keep in mind when you change this, the UnixWare 7 device database will reflect that a new disk has been added. You can then later reset the database so that the older entries with the older disk stamp are removed.
21.8.4 View Controllers
This is a sub-menu to eight other options. From this you can view the controllers and system cards in your computer. You can see the ISA cards, PCI cards, PC cards, and EISA/MCA cards. In addition, you can see all the modules that are currently loaded in the booted kernel. One useful choice is to show the recognized controllers, hard-drives, and tape drives. This shows you all of the hard-drives, tape drives, and CD-ROM drives that UnixWare is aware of. This can be useful when you are trying to get the booted A1 and A2 diskettes to recognize certain hardware and you are not certain that this is in fact seen.
21.8.5 Load BTLD Modules
You can load any number of BTLD (Boot Time Loadable Driver) modules from this choice. It recognizes all three of the popular formats. Simply follow the instructions and the module will be loaded and linked into the kernel on the fly. Following this, you should see a message on the screen showing any new hardware.
21.8.6 View PCI, ISA, PCM/CIA Cards
If you are wondering what cards UnixWare is aware of, you can use this for further information. The information on the PCI cards shows the type of controller card in plain English as well as its identifier so there can be no mistake as to what the card is. In addition to the card, a resource number is shown on the far left-hand column. This number is used to modify the resource manager database. If there is a card you are interested in changing some resource values, note the resource key number and then choose option "8) Modify Resource Key (experts only)" to adjust the value.
21.8.7 Modify Resource Manager Database
This feature is very useful if there is a particular card that needs to be recognized, but for some reason UnixWare is not recognizing it. You can change the interrupt type, the interrupt level, and the IO address directly from this menu. In addition, you can change the IO address start range and ending range. If you are unclear of what to put in this area, you can view the man page for sdevice from another UnixWare system and receive some useful tips.
You can use this section, for example, if an Adaptec SCSI card was not being recognized. By changing the resources, you can then reload the Host Bus adapter module and it will more than likely find the card and the devices attached to the card.
21.9 Unix Experts Menu
FIGURE 105. Experts Menu![]()
21.9.1 Hard Disk Single User Mode
This is one of the nicest features of the Air-Bag Menu System. After invoking this choice your system will appear as if you are booted from the hard-drive but in single user mode. All the filesystems are mounted, including all data partitions. You are in the root directory using the Korn shell and can perform system administrative tasks. For example, you can add further boot time loadable (BTLD) modules or copy files and/or restore files from tape.
The power of this feature is that if your system is not bootable, yet nearly functional, you can be in single user mode and make repairs and restore files that are damaged.
21.9.2 Deleting Filesystems from the Master List
At times, especially when merging two filesystems into one, it is desirable to remove a filesystem from the Air-Bag's knowledge.This option is used in the case where a filesystem was mounted at the time of the A2 diskette creation, but it is not to be mounted when the filesystem is being rebuilt. When merging two filesystems into one, use this feature to delete the redundant filesystem.
FIGURE 106. Slice Manager![]()
21.9.3 Slice Manager
The Slice Manager is a critical and fundamental piece of the UnixWare 7 Air-Bag. To those of you that are used to the SCO OpenServer 5 divvy utility, it has many of the same options and features, yet is more powerful. For example, you can use c to create a filesystem, p to prevent a filesystem from being created, and so on. The full set of commands is specified in Table 22.
At times you might want to escape to the shell within the slice manager to check a configuration or view the /etc/AIRBAG.MOUNTS file. This is easily done using the exclamation mark (!) as is typical with many other Unix commands. There are ten other options available to give you full control of your slice table. These including specifying the units (512 by blocks, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and cylinders), sorting (four ways to sort), adding slices, modifying slices, specifying starting offsets, specifying ending offsets, and specifying slice size. Keep in mind, when you are working with megabyte and gigabyte units, decimal places are allowed in assigned specifications.
The Slice Manager is fairly flexible and allows you to modify the slice table (VTOC) in a matter you are comfortable with. For example, some users prefer to specify starting offset and a size, while others prefer to specify starting offset and ending offset. The Slice Manager can be used either way.
One possibility after running the Slice Manner and creating a new filesystem is that one might see the following message:
(UX:UFS MKFS:WARNING: XX SECTOR (S) IN LAST CYLINDER UNALLOCATED.
Do not worry about this. It means the last cylinder group is not full since the partition does not end on a cylinder boundary. This is of no concern.
If you want to see the status of a particular filesystem, the best way is to go into the Slice Manager and select m to modify a slice. If the slice is a filesystem, the status of the filesystem is shown in bold white letters. The following table describes each filesystem status:
It is possible that some types of corruption could make all the slices appear to be SLICE NOT ADDED YET. If you see this, run a diagnostic. Then you will probably have to start from scratch to prepare the disk and to select the new hard disk menu choice from the main menu.
If you escape to the shell, mount a slice, and later forget to unmount it, you will see that the slice is still mounted. Most of the other statuses in the Slice Manager are self-explanatory. The Slice Manager has built-in help and it is suggested that you use this.
By default, when the slices are first displayed, they are displayed in slice number order. However, this order has absolutely nothing to do with the relative starting offsets or sizes. Therefore, after becoming familiar with the slices, you should sort the table by starting offset, ending offset or size which you can determine how to align slices and get them correct.
Since every person is unique and thinks in different units, you can adjust the slice table [VTOC] to display the units of your choice. These include 512 byte blocks, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and cylinders. When you switch units, it effects only the display. Internally all offsets or sizes are kept as 512 byte blocks. Keep in mind, the percentages used in the Slice Manager are approximate. They will not always add up to 100% due to rounding and the fact that there are several small slices each less than one percent but combined could amount to more than two to three percent.
21.10 Special Features
21.10.1 Merging Two Filesystems into One
If you have created the Air-Bag diskettes under a two-filesystem configuration (/dev/root and /dev/u mounted on /usr), and you are converting to a one-filesystem configuration, you must manually edit the file /etc/AIRBAG.MOUNTS. This file contains the filesystems that the Air-Bag expects to be mounted when it does the restore from the tape.
Simply delete the line containing the filesystem that will no longer be in use under the new configuration. For the case above, delete the entire line containing /dev/u. Do not make any other modifications to the file or the restore will fail.
Alternatively, you can use the Air-Bag UNIX Experts' Menu choice
11) Delete a Filesystem from the /etc/AIRBAG.MOUNTS list
21.10.2 Splitting One Filesystem into Two
When converting from a single-filesystem configuration to a dual-filesystem configuration, you must add the entry for the second filesystem to the /etc/AIRBAG.MOUNTS file on the A2 diskette.
The line must have six tokens; the last being the disk number on which the filesystem is found. For the filesystem /dev/u mounted on /usr use:
/dev/u /usr 54389 K disk1
The header of the file /etc/AIRBAG.MOUNTS should be left untouched. For convenience, simply copy the line representing the single filesystem (/dev/root):
/dev/root / 41990 K disk1
and change each of the tokens to the appropriate value. The second token represents the name of the directory on which this filesystem is mounted and must be accurate. The Air-Bag uses this in restoring data to the filesystem. The finished output looks like this:
FILE MOUNTED FS SIZE DISK
SYSTEM ON TYPE in K NO
========================================================
/dev/root / vxfs 41990 K disk1
/dev/u /usr ufs 54389 K disk1
The number representing the size in kilobytes does not have to be exact. It serves only as a reminder to you when using the Slice Manager in deciding how to allocate the space among the filesystems.
21.10.3 Hard Disk Name Mapping
Not every combination of hard disks and controllers can be anticipated. There is a good chance that if the A1 and A2 diskettes were created on a system with a different combination of controllers than when booted, the disk drive mapping could be different.
Let us suppose you have three SCSI controllers each with one hard disk (at ID 0) and suppose that the third SCSI controller and the disk drive on it becomes bad due to a lightning strike.
You add a replacement hard-drive to the second SCSI controller and make its SCSI ID 0.
When you boot from the Air-Bag diskettes, it will look for the hard-drive on device /dev/rdsk/c3b0t0d0s0. However, since the controller is no longer present, no device is found there. Instead that device is found at /dev/rdsk/c2b0t1d0s0 (SCSI ID 1). However, the Air-Bag has recorded all of its database information and mount points as starting with /dev/rdsk/c3b0t0d0XX.
You can change the disk drive name mapping by using the apply_map utility which looks in the file /etc/MAPFILE for mapping information. You must manually add this file to the A2 diskette when it is generated or create it on the fly when you are booted from the Air-Bag. Using the example above, in this file you put the following two entries:
c3b0t0d0 c2b0t1d0
Then run apply_map from the shell. This informs Air-Bag that the hard-drive at c3b0t0d0 has moved to c2b0t1d0. All previous references to c3b0t0d0 are converted. Thus all the features of the Air-Bag such as the totally automated restore will work as expected.
To reverse the change, run apply_map -r.
This feature is provided as a convenience. We cannot anticipate all the uses or hardware configurations that you may have. With HOT swappable disks, mirroring, volume managers, fail-over clustering, there is an almost endless combination of hardware you could have. Since each crash is unique, this simple tool provides a flexible way for you to manage the necessary mapping needed to restore the system.
You know what you have done to the system, so it is fairly easy to create this map. If it does not work, you can back out the changes with the -r option.
21.10.4 Bootable CD-ROM
You can create a bootable CD-ROM that can be used instead of the A1 and A2 floppy diskettes.
The steps to do this are as follows
1. Install the cdrecord package The software can be loaded using by inserting CD #3 of your UnixWare installation into the CD-ROM drive and then typing:
mount -F cdfs -r /dev/cdrom/cdrom1 /mnt
/mnt/INSTALL
Select choice 16) Enter names of packages to install, then type
cdrecord
This package will then install. After installation, you find mkisofs and cdrecord are in /usr/local/bin.
2. Go to Utility Menu after running /etc/airbag. Select the choice to create the bootable CD-ROM. You should do this only after you have created the A1 and A2 diskettes at least one time.
3. From the shell prompt, type
cd /usr/cactus/airbag/cdrom
./make_bootcd
4. If the CD burner is on the UnixWare system, run the cdrecord program to transfer the CDROM.ISO image to a CD-RW disk.
5. If the CD burner is on another machine, move the file CDROM.ISO to the machine and transfer it to a CD as an image using the appropriate software.
When you boot from the CD, some CD-ROM/BIOS combinations will work better than others. You must have a BIOS that maps the CD-ROM the A: drive when it detects a bootable media in the drive. It must say this on the screen as it is booting. If it does not, there is a good chance the bootable CD will not work. If you are using a SCSI CD-ROM, there are very few compatibility problems.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |