NAME

clone-irix-boot-disk – Clone an IRIX boot disk

DESCRIPTION

A spare, bootable copy of the system disk is the cheapest insurance an old SGI can have. This partitions the second disk, copies the root filesystem with xfsdump and puts the volume header files on it so the copy boots on its own.

STEPS

1. On the running system, in a terminal as root, run fx and select the correct target SCSI ID to clone to.
2. Choose repartition, then xfs, and answer yes to everything.
3. Check the label to see that all is OK.
4. Make the filesystem, replacing X with the disk id on controller 0:

# mkfs /dev/rdsk/dks0dXs0

5. Mount it and copy the root filesystem over:

# mount /dev/dsk/dks0dXs0 /mnt
# xfsdump -J - /dev/root | xfsrestore -J - /mnt

6. Use dvhtool -v /dev/rdsk/dks0dXvh to get all the header files from the current root drive into files, and after saving them in /tmp write them to the cloned drive's volume header.

That should do the trick.

NOTES

Label the spare. Six months later nobody remembers which of two identical Seagates is the clone.

SEE ALSO

systems/arthur