sutter@OHIO-STATE.CSNET (Bob Sutterfield) (01/04/86)
As I sit here waiting for tu58-based stand-alone backup to restore an image
of my system as it existed a month ago... Mamas, don't let your babies grow
up to do the things I've done.
configuration: VAX-11/750, VMS v4.2 (more on that later), 4 Megs memory,
UDA-50, RA80 system disk (dua0:), RA81 user disk (dua1:), TU80 tape drive.
This morning, there seemed to be a bitmap error on the system disk that made
it appear write-locked after boot. Diagnostics were run, and there was
indeed a bad block (I'm not sure if it was in the bitmap area or not). The
disk formatter (evrla?) was run (notice that again I'm not saying by who,
but it wasn't by me), with the understanding that it would ask whether to
format the FE tracks (apparently "Field Engineer" territory) or the user
data area. The formatter went ahead and formatted the entire pack. Bummer.
I have been in the habit of performing /image backups on the first Monday of
the month, and /since=backup on every other Monday. With our user traffic,
this seemed to use "about the right number of tapes" for the incrementals
(two or three a week @1600 bpi), so I figured I was OK. Maybe not...
As described in the Backup utility manual, I used stand-alone backup (backup
/image/record msa0:backup.bck dua0:) to restore the state of things as of
Dec 2, and am now running the VMS v4.1 system from that tape to apply
successively older incremental backups (backup /incremental msa0:backup.bck
dua0:) to the system disk, starting with last Monday's.
The interesting thing is that in the middle there (two incrementals back) I
updated to VMS v4.2. Alas, I didn't do a standalone image backup just
before, but rather decided to go with just the weekly incremental. I don't
know just yet whether doing incremental backup restores will give me a
working v4.2 system or not - I may just have to bring up v4.2 from the
distribution tape and go it from there. We may see later in the night about
that one.
So here's the point of all this:
I figure that to better insure my posterior, I want to build a bootable
system on our user disk (it has plenty of space right now) and keep it as a
shadow of the real system disk. By "shadow" I mean that every midnight a
job will perform whatever backing-up magic needs to be done to make dua1: a
replacement in every useful way for dua0:, so that if this happens, I will
just need to change the "boot device" knob to "C" or something and bump the
reset button and run from there.
I also want to maintain a current stand-alone backup on both disks for
obvious reasons.
Any suggestions on how to build this system on the second disk? Do I just
need to copy my [sys0...] and [syse...] over, keep them updated every
midnight, and that's that? It surely can't be that simple. What do you do
about this sort of thing? Any suggestions are welcome!
-----
Human: Bob Sutterfield
Facilities Management Division
The Ohio State University Instruction & Research Computer Center
Work: Ohio Cooperative Extension Service, Computer Management Group
OCES VAX System Manager/Programmer (VMS)
Mail: sutter@osu-eddie.UUCP sutterfield-r%osu-20@osu-eddie.UUCP
or: sutter@osu-eddie.ohio-state.CSNET sutterfield-r@osu-20.ohio-state.CSNET
or: 2120 Fyffe Rd rm 109, Columbus OH 43210
Bell: (614) 422 - 9034