benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies) (12/02/90)
After much fuming and fussing, I've mostly complete installing a machine over the net. Here are some hints. The difficulties arose because I didn't want the tapeless machine to have all the lpp's installed that the original tapeful machine did, so I didn't want to just take a big backup-to-file and slurp that over the net. I wanted the same initial bos.obj that I got when I read the tape. For reasons unknown to me, IBM dosen't document the trivial way to do this. One just fsf's the release tape two files, and then restores it into a temporary directory. The resulting directory can then be backed up to a file. Put it in /usr/lpp.install, and name it bos.obj.whatever. Before re-backing up, make sure that the .fs.size file that came off the tape is reasonable. The first network install that I tried failed because bosboot required 14M in /tmp, and the .fs.size from the tape only created a 12M /tmp. Since the target machine had 2 120M disks, the install initially used only the first, and didn't grow any file systems. Now, you need backup images of whatever lpp's and their updates you want to install. The "make backup format" option to smit "Install optional program products with updates" almost never works, since it dosen't expose the -w argument to bffcreate, and the temp restore directories are BIG. There is also a menu item for "make backup format files for later use." This, so far as I can tell, is useless, since it assumes that the media has only one file on it. It does not offer the menu of all of the individual products and updates. I resorted to a ksh scripts that loops running bffcreate and fsf 1. This pulled all the products and updates off of the release tapes and the 3002 tape. Once you have the pieces you want in /usr/lpp.install and /usr/lpp.update, ignore the blue pages instructions to create some other directory for installation images. Just list /usr/lpp.install/* and /usr/lpp.update/* in /u/netinst/db/choices. My current strategy is to install only bos.obj and bosnet on the target machine, and then mount /usr via nfs to get the benefit of everything else. Time will tell if this trick will work. -- Benson I. Margulies
slade@cs.utexas.edu (Matthew Cronk) (12/03/90)
In article <1990Dec2.023618.16600@odi.com>, Benson I. Margulies writes: > For reasons unknown to me, IBM dosen't document the trivial way to do > this. One just fsf's the release tape two files, and then restores it > into a temporary directory. The resulting directory can then be backed > up to a file. speaking of trivial, you can avoid the restore/backup step like this: dd if=/dev/rmt0.5 of=/tmp/poop bs=512 conv=sync saves time and space... Matt
gboice@slate.mines.colorado.edu (BOICE GINA LYNN -R CC) (12/05/90)
In article <1990Dec2.023618.16600@odi.com> benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies) writes: >After much fuming and fussing, I've mostly complete installing a >machine over the net. Here are some hints. I have also found that the network installation documented for aix is a bit cumbersome. This is the method I use. I load bos from 1/4 tape (I have a 1/4 drive I can move around) Next I load bosnetC and bsmEn_US from diskette. I configure the network and mount a remote disk with all the lpp's on it. I then run a script to install the lpp's I want on the machine. This whole process takes less than 2 hours. With 30 6000's time is a big factor. This also allows for many machines to be loading the lpp's at the same time. I recently pulled 3002 off of tape and also have it arranged on disk as lpp's. I load the software as I did above. This works just fine. Gina Boice Colorado School of Mines gboice@mines.colorado.edu Internet gboice@mines.bitnet Bitnet
wross@engin.umich.edu (Wendy Ross) (12/06/90)
Good gravy, I would think dragging a tape drive and diskettes
around would be rather cumbersome, not to mention a big waste
of time!
Ever since we received the machines in bulk, I followed (pretty
much) IBM's instructions on setting up a server to be able
to load the base operating system and the network lpp through
the network. Anytime I need to reload a machine I take
three floppy diskettes, the boot, display, and installation/
maintenance diskettes, and the client gets absolutely everything
from the server. Naturally, I enhanced things with a couple
of my own scripts. The load procedure for the base os and
network lpp takes about 1/2 hour.
-Wendy
wross@caen.engin.umich.edu
<insert amusing quip here>