SUMMARY: Cloning machines with different HW

From: Palma (palma@ssi.it)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2000 - 08:24:30 CDT


tanks for their help to: Frode Stromsvag, Jaewan Kim, Merrell Vince,
Tim Evans, Jaewan Kim, Mike Busse, Atmane Alouache,
David Foster, Roger Fujii, Kevin Colagio

Someone has suggested to use jumpstart, but this was not my case: I just had to move 1 machine filesystem
on a new one (SparcClassic -> Sparc5).

good suggestions have been:

- check for '/etc/path_to_inst'
        in fact this file is HW dependent and should be updated by 'drvconfig' command.
        But if you boot from cdrom and run 'drvconfig -r <root_partition>' the command
        pretends to update '/etc/path_to_inst' and fails because /etc is mounted on cdrom
        (read-only filesystem). So I've done a copy of '/tmp/root/etc/path_to_inst' that seems
        to be a good one. Furthermore (on Solaris 2.3 only?) drvconfig seems to have some
        problem about <root_partition> specification; so the suggested sequence is:

        mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a (disk root partition)
        cd /a
        drvconfig -r devices (drvconfig -r /a/devices doesn't work!)

- run 'disks' and 'tapes' (-r <root_partition>)
        devlinks adds /dev entries for miscellaneous devices and pseudo-devices only so
        the command 'disk' is needed to create /dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk entries.

        disks -r /a
        tapes -r /a
        devlinks -r /a
        halt
        boot -rs

This are the results cloning machine with different HW but same architecture (sun4m). As suggested
I will never try to do un upgrade between different platforms (sun4m -> sun4u). There are too many stuffs
(/usr/kvm among them) that are platform-dependent.

        

-----Original Message-----
> Hi managers,
>
> Sun assistance doesn't support the machines cloning, so your experience is the latest chance!
>
> In order to avoid OS + patches + applications installation, I need to clone a SparcClassic (source machine) with the following configuration:
>
> - architecture sun4m
> - 32Mb memory
> - 3 external disks (200Mb, 690Mb, 690Mb)
> - 2 ethernet interfaces (le0, le1)
> - Solaris 2.3 + Y2K and Recommended & Security patches
>
> on a SparcStation 5 (dest. machine):
>
> - architecture sun4m
> - 96 Mb memory
> - 1 internal disk (2.1Gb)
> - 2 ethernet interfaces (le0, le1).
>
> I've done the following operation:
>
> - ufsdump all partitions on source machine
>
> on dest. machine:
> - boot cdrom (Solaris 2.3) and exit to shell
> - created same n. of partitions on disk
> - newfs, ufsrestore and fsck all partition
> - modified root_partition etc/vfstab (c0txd0sx -> c0t3d0sx)
> - installboot on /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0
> - rm -r root_partition 'dev' and 'devices' dir.
> - drvconfig -r root_partition (create 'devices' dir.)
> - devlinks -r root_partition (create 'dev' dir.)
> - halt
> - boot -s
>
> with the following results:
>
> boots OK from disk root_partition but after a while the following messages are displayed:
>
> ifconfig: le0: no such interface
> ifconfig: le1: no such interface (this is correct because I've not yet installed it)
> Hostname: 'myhost'
> mount: /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3 or /usr , no such file or directory
> /sbin/swapadd: expr: not found
> the / file system (/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0) is being checked
> /sbin/rcS: /usr/sbin/fsck: not found
> *** SYSTEM WILL REBOOT AUTOMATICALLY ***
> .
> .
>
> My questions are:
> - Is it possible to clone different HW machines with the described steps?
>
> if yes:
> - have I failed or forgot some step?
> - is the cloning operation possible when architectures differ? (I'm planning to clone a 690MP server (sun4m) to a new E250 (sun4u).

==================================================================
 Mimmo Palma - Systems Administrator | mailto:palma@ssi.it
 Space Software Italia | phone: +39 099 4701-510
 Viale del Lavoro 101 | fax: +39 099 4701-777
 I-74100 Taranto - Italy |
==================================================================



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