kimcm@ambush.UUCP (Kim Chr. Madsen) (01/28/88)
Hello out there, I have a problems installing a customized root-partition on a AT&T 3b2/600 in an easy way. What I want to do is to take a backup of the root partition after installing all essential software packages plus additional local packages, then take the tape to a clean or crashed machine, put in the tape into the streamer and make a similar configuration on this machine, without having to go through the installation and configuration of all the packages. I think it must be possible by making a filesystem on the tape, a bootable root partition, and a backup partition for the customized root-partition, and having some shell scripts to handle the Harddisk format, partitioning and mkfs's. Does anybody have information about: 1) The layout of the AT&T supplied installation tape. 2) How to solve the problem of installing a customized root-partition. (Sources to implement such a solution will be greatly appreciated). Best Regards Kim Chr. Madsen.
pwy@pyuxe.UUCP (Peyton Yanchurak) (02/01/88)
In article <590@ambush.UUCP>, kimcm@ambush.UUCP (Kim Chr. Madsen) writes: > Does anybody have information about: > > 1) The layout of the AT&T supplied installation tape. > 2) How to solve the problem of installing a customized > root-partition. (Sources to implement such a solution will > be greatly appreciated). As far as I can deduce (and I may be wrong), the installation tape laods a very small striped down root file system on to a small partion on one of the hard disks (the partition reserved for installing packages). It then boots from this small partition. It then partitions the disks and creates the real root and usr file systems. Finaly it lets you load in the selectable software packages. You can create a bootable floppy that includes a few carefully chosen programs (you don't have much space). You boot from the floppy, partion the hard disk (if necessary) and volcopy the orignal root partition from the backup cartrage tape to the hard disk. If you have a second scsi controller (not necessarly a second host adapter card), and an extrnal hard disk, you could have a backup bootable root file system. Your task would then be very simple. The rule for booting off of scsi disks on the 3b2/600 is that you can boot off of the first disk hanging off of a scsi controller (not the host adapter card). Peyton Yanchurak Bellcore bellcore!pyuxe!pwy