[Suns-at-Home] SunOs - Disk clone

[Bob Smart]

It has been years since I've done this so I won't try to give you all 
the details but some process and pointers of the way I used to do it 
when cloning machines for a training room

1) List out partitions and sizes of existing disk Yea I write it on 
paper I found writing it down helped me think about it

2) Get a disk of sufficient size (bigger is always fine) in an external 
chassis and hook it up to the system (I believe in shutting the system 
down to connect up a SCSI disk)

3) Partition the new disk and newfs the partitions.

4) mount the partitions ( I usually had mount points /sd1a, /sd1d, 
/sd1e, /sd1f, /sd1g, /sd1h already created on my standard image)

5) For each partition cd to the partition and use
dump 0cf - . | (cd <newpartition>; restore xf -)

Do this for each partition. This command used to show up one either the 
dump or restore man page

6) If you plan on booting the new dis as an external disk (usually sd1 
or sd2) then edit the fstab file to change the partition names from sd0 
[yea I would occasionally forget this if I hadn't done it in a while]

7) Look at the installboot man page to get the syntax of the command 
right then run this command on the new disk

If my memory is good that is pretty much the process. Yes it could 
probably be scripted but I never did it often enough on any given 
configuration to make it worth while.

Please don't trust any of what I have said. Look through it and make 
sure you understand why you are doing each step along the way. I have 
not intentionally put any tricks or gotchas in it but it has been at 
least 3 years since I have done it on a Solaris system and much longer 
on a SunOS system. The same basic process has worked on DEC(Compaq) 
Ultrix/Tru64 systems and the basic dump piped to restore is a mainstay 
tool I've used when moving filesystems (as long as they are not on the 
same physical disk. In that case you could sometimes get done faster by 
moving it first to a new disk than back to the first one because of disk 
head movement )

I had an aversion to using DD since as I remember it didn't allow as 
much flexibility in changing disk partition sizes (or sometimes layouts)

Bob Smart (bsmart@xecu.net)



martin nichols wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction.
>
> I'm trying to keep an an early 1990's IPX based PCB CAD system operational. I 
> have another complete IPX which can be canibalised for hardware spares, but 
> no copy of SunOs 4.1.3 or the CAD package that runs on it. Even If I had I'm 
> not sure that I would be able to install and configure it without any 
> manuals.
>
> Both IPX's have had the NVRAM hack and now have a 1/2AA lithium cell that 
> should keep the clock ticking until I'm in a box!
>
> My question is can I somehow copy the entire disk so that in the event of the 
> disk drive failing I can rebuild the system.
> The drives in both the IPXs are the same - SUN424.
> I have an Archive Viper QIC150 tape drive.
> An Exabyte EXB-8500 tape drive.
> A SUN CD ROM drive.
> A non-SUN SCSI external drive box and some SCSI disks in the 1 to 2 GByte size 
> range.
> Network cables +AUI -> 10baseT adapters.
>
> Any help would be much appreciated.
> Thanks.
>
> Regards to all on Suns@home.
> Martin Nichols, Surrey UK.
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