alan@shodha.enet.dec.com ( Alan's Home for Wayward Notes File.) (01/21/91)
In article <72740@bu.edu.bu.edu>, jdubb@bucsf.bu.edu (jay dubb) writes: > I am posting this for a frend of mine, who doesn't have access to > USENET, so please respond directly to mlevin@jade.tufts.edu. > I'll try. I'll also post since it might be of general interest. > I have the following weird problem. I have a MicroVax II/RC, with > a 130 MB hard drive, on which I installed (off another node in a > network) Ultrix 4.0, and a few optional load sets. I then took the Vax > home, and discovered that I need a bigger drive. Is there any way for me > to make a full backup or dump of everything I have on the small disk > now onto the TK50 tape, then install the big disk, and restore all the > software onto it? 1. First choice - If you can get both disks on the system at the same time, just dump from one to the other across a pipe. Use newfs to build a file system on the A partition of the bigger disk and repeat for each file system. Shutdown to single user, unmount everthing and for each file system (assuming unit 1 is the new disk): # mount /dev/ra1a /mnt # dump 0f - / | ( cd /mnt ; restore rf - ) # umount /mnt Replace the '/' with the name of each file system in turn and adjust the name of the special device being mounted. 2. 2nd choice - Shutdown to single user, unmount all the file systems and backup them up to tape. Swap disks then boot the standalone system (you'll need the distribution on TK50), build a root file system and restore it. Read closely the manual page for mkfs(8) since this is all you have. Some hints: Show a preference for using a file system size of 32768. I don't think mkfs(8) will give you a partition on the disk. It uses the default one in the driver, but you may want to put on the disk: chpt -a /dev/rra1a mkfs(8) doesn't give you a boot block. Use dd(1) to put the file bootblks somewhere in the first 8KB the disk: dd if=bootblks of=/dev/rra1a bs=8k conv=sync Make sure the unit number of the new disk is the same as the old one. 3. Once you have the root file system restored you can boot from it and use newfs(8) to build file systems for /usr. > Or, wll it get all confused because the disk size > won't match what it used to be when the operating system was built > (max partition sizes as given by df, etc.)? Careful use of the mkfs(8) will take care any problem this might cause. > And, one last question: am I right in assuming that making the > swap space larger will improve my system performance? Depends. You either have enough page/swap space or you don't. If you have enough and you have only one there aren't many things you can do to get better performance out of it. One the other hand if you have two disks splitting the page/swap evenly between the two, might provide better performance than one big one, if you're paging and swapping. You might want to experiment with "swapfrag" in the configuration file to see if raising it makes a difference. Of course, try getting more memory first. The fastest page operation is one that doesn't happen. > If so (DECWrite > takes ages on some of my bigger documents...), how do I set the size? > The system never seemed to ask me how big I want it to be during the > build. Left to itself the installation uses the B partition for page/swap. On the typical RD disk you have three partitions: A - Root file system. B - page/swap G - /usr > Thanks in advance for the help. > > Mike Levin (mlevin@jade.tufts.edu) -- Alan Rollow alan@nabeth.cxn.dec.com