[comp.sys.hp] Standalone boot tape???

kriso@lombard.dartmouth.edu (Kris Olander) (04/12/91)

YOW!  Send in the fire truck to put out the ashes!

Here's one for you HP admin gurus.

I just managed to majorly screw up our HP9000 340
file server.  Don't know how, but the symptoms were:

1) ranlib (any .a file)
	produced:
	"sh: host unknown"

2) so I rebooted thinking that a new state would solve
   all my woes.

3) Boot fails right when init starts up and I get
	"getty failing ... respawning to rapidly ..."


And that's all she wrote.

So, to the get to the point of my Subject line,

I next attempted to stick in my HP-UX Install (7.0)
tape thinking that mmmaaayybe I could boot off the
tape, mount the root drive, figure out what was 
hosed, fix it (supreme confidence:), and then be
back up and running.

Wrong.  I couldn't find any way to get out of the
installation procedure.  I've bailed myself out of
a few root damage session on our Suns by using this
method, and so was hoping that ... 

Anyone know of a way (without duplicating the root
file system) of bringing up a mini-unix for damage
control sessions?

(BTW: our systems don't have floppys, just a tape drive.
	and hard drives -- of course.

-- 
Kris Olander
--------------kris.olander@dartmouth.edu----------------

franks@hpuamsa.neth.hp.com (Frank Slootweg CRC) (04/15/91)

> Here's one for you HP admin gurus.

  No need for gurus, just RTBOTFM (read the beginning of ...) :-)

  You did not say if the failing system is still down, so I will assume
it is.

  I suppose that before/in the flood of messages from "init" (the
messages you quoted are probably somewhat incorrect :-)) there is no
"login: " message, is there? If there is then just log in and set all
"getty" lines (except for the console) from "respawn" to "off".

  I also suppose that you do not have a Recovery System (which you are
instructed to make on about page 7 of the System Administrator Manual),
otherwise you would not be asking for a "Standalone boot tape".

  If no "login: " and no Recovery System then, if available, hook up the
disk to another working system and use a procedure similar to that for
the Recovery System to inspect and fix you disk.

> (BTW: our systems don't have floppys, just a tape drive.
> 	and hard drives -- of course.
                      ^
  If you have no other system but have (as is implied by the aboove
quote) two or more disks then install HP-UX on the second disk and use
it to fix the first one (You do have backup of the second disk, don't
you?). 

  If no second disk then give the net (in *detail*) *all* the messages,
preferably from power on, but at least from "Booting  /hp-ux", till the
failure point.

  I hope this helps somewhat and the next time PLEASE make a Recovery
System.

Frank Slootweg, Dutch Customer Response Center.

mjs@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella) (04/16/91)

>I just managed to majorly screw up our HP9000 340
>file server.  Don't know how, but the symptoms were:
>
>1) ranlib (any .a file)
>	produced:
>	"sh: host unknown"

Sorry I can't help with your administration problems, but I would like to
point out that "ranlib" is a no-op on HP-UX.  "cat" it sometime - it is a three
line shell script whose sole purpose is to print

	ranlib: ar already did it for you, see ar(1).

--------------
Marc Sabatella (marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com)
Disclaimers:
	2 + 2 = 3, for suitably small values of 2
	Bill and Dave may not always agree with me

darko@hpfcdc.HP.COM (David Arko) (04/17/91)

You are absolutely right, there is no way of breaking out of the
install procedure to fix up your system.  However, if you have
running system, there is a utility called mkrs(1M) that allows
you to make a recovery system on a tape.

The catch here is that you must make a recovery system
tape *before* you crash.

FYI:  The reason the install procedure does not allow you to break out,
      is that the install-system is running with zero swap space and
      utilities like fsck are swap hogs and may not run correctly.
      Where as the mkrs tape uses the swap on the hard disk.

-- David Arko (darko@hpfcrn.fc.hp.com)