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Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation) |
3. Creating Solaris Flash Archives (Tasks)
4. Installing and Administering Solaris Flash Archives (Tasks)
The following procedures provide the simplest instructions for creating a Flash Archive image that can be loaded onto the target system in order to recover from a failed disk drive.
To perform these procedures, you need access to the following:
Either the initial boot media, such as the installation CD or DVD, or a netinstall service
Off-system storage for the FLAR image
This step assumes that the replacement disk drive will be the same size and partitioned identically to the original drive.
Use one of the following two methods to obtain information about the partition table on the disk drive.
# format
The format command provides the names of the partitions.
The first disk in the list is usually the boot drive.
For further information, see the format(1M) man page.
# prtvtoc /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0
The prtvtoc command provides the size of the partitions by the number of cylinders for each partition.
Save the information to a safe location. You will use this information during the restoration of the system image during recovery.
The FLAR archive will require up to 15 GB of space without compression.
# df -h /tmp
Note - If you do not have sufficient space in /tmp, try a different filesystem, such as /export, instead. In which case, use the alternate filesystem, such as /export, instead of /tmp in the following steps.
For instructions on shutting down a system, see How to Shut Down a Stand-Alone System in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.
>OK boot -s
For further information, see How to Boot a System to Run Level S (Single-User Level) in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.
Execute the flarcreate command as shown in the following example.
In this example, the FLAR image will be stored to a directory under /tmp named FLAR_recovery. The FLAR image will be named newsystem_recovery.flar.
# mkdir /FLAR_recovery # flarcreate -n my_recovery_image -x /FLAR_recovery \ /FLAR_recovery/newsystem_recovery.flar
In this example:
-n my_recovery_image implants a name into the FLAR image. The name should be something unique and meaningful to better identify it as the FLAR image for the system.
-x /FLAR_recovery causes the /FLAR_recovery directory and its contents to be excluded from the FLAR image, since it will not be needed in the recovery image.
Note - By default, the flarcreate command ignores items that are located in “swap” partitions.
/FLAR_recovery/newsystem_recovery.flar is the path and filename of the FLAR image. The filename should be something unique and meaningful to better identify it as the FLAR image for the system.
The FLAR image must be saved to a local storage device that is not the boot device, or to a remote location across NFS. The storage device, or remote location, must be accessible to the system at recovery time.
Copy the new FLAR to a safe location, as in this example.
# cp /FLAR_recovery/newsystem_recovery.flar \ /net/my-safe-machine/FLAR_image
The recovery process begins as a normal installation using whichever install method you choose. Instead of installing from the boot method, the installer is used to install from the FLAR image.
ok> boot net
For example, enter the following path.
/net/my-safe-machine/FLAR_image/newsystem_recovery.flar
The Flash Archive Summary screen is displayed.
From our example, the location would be the following.
my-safe-machine:/FLAR_image/newsystem_recovery.flar
The partition table corresponds to each slice on the disk. Partition 0 from the partition table maps to Slice 0 (s0) on the hard drive.
The slice sizes can be viewed in Cylinders to better match the output from the partition table. Select Cyl in the Partition form to view the form by cylinders.
Do not change the size of Slice 2. It must span the entire disk regardless of the space being allocated.
To get the Start and Size values for the Partition form, use the partition information that you recorded earlier when you ran the prtvtoc command. To get the value for Start in the Partition form, divide the First Sector value by the Sectors/Cylinder value , both found in the prtvtoc command output. The Size value in the Partition form is found by dividing the Sector Count by the Sectors/Cylinder value, information also provided by the prtvtoc command output.
If the replacement disk has more storage space than the original disk, then it can be partitioned to use the space available. However, at least as much space for each partition must be allocated as was allocated on the original disk.
After the system reboots, the recovery is now complete.
The recovery instructions above assume that none of the hardware components have been added, removed or moved between the time that the recovery image was created and the time that a recovery is performed. If, however, a system has been recovered after hardware has been changed, then it is possible that the device trees (/dev and /devices) need to be updated. This update can be done using either a reconfiguration reboot of the system or by using the devfsadm command.
To rebuild the device trees, as a root-level user, use the devfsadm command as follows.
# devfsadm -C