Automated install Arch x86_64 root-file system the "Raspberry" way..

Dear Archers,
I am currently deeply interested in installing Arch as dual boot on my
current x86_64 system.
And yes, there is plenty information regarding this subject in Arch wiki's.
However...
I would like to automate the installation the "Raspberry-Pi" -way.
Details on the "Installation tab" of:
http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/raspberry-pi.
As you can see, the installation steps are easy to automate, in my opinion.
That's why I wrote an automation script for this purpose..
The information further suggests that there is a root-filesystem for
Arch named: 'ArchLinuxARM-rpi-latest.tar.gz.'
Unfortunately, I don't think this root system will function on x86_64 systems..
So I researched if there was a root filesystem for Arch x86_64 and found filenames like 'root-image.fs.sfs' 'core.db' 'core.img'.
But I'm unsure if these archives/images really contain a rootfilesystem similar to the ArchARm system.
Therefore my question:
Does anybody know if there is a similar root filesystem for x86_64 so I can reproduce the "rpi-way" installation for x86_64 systems?
Kind regards,
Kees Epema

You are definitely not going to be able to simply dd arch to your machine unless you create an image to do so. Even then, that image would become old and stale pretty quickly, possibly leading to problems getting the system up to date.
In my opinion, the raspberry pi way to simply dd'ing an image to an SD card is a disservice to the ArchlinuxARM users. Though seemingly the proper way to get a system running on a raspberry pi, it masks the install process and leaves the user without a clue as to what would have gone into creating the system.
Go read the beginners guide. Use a virtual machine to practice if you need. Shortcuts are not going to help you with Arch.

Similar Messages

Unbootable Solaris 10 x86 installed on ZFS root file system

Hi all,
I have unbootable Solaris 10 x86 installed on ZFS root file system. on an IDE HDD
The bios keep showing the msg
DISK BOOT FAILURE , PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM BOOT DISK
please note :
1- the HDD is connected properly and recognized by the system
2- GRUB don't show any messages
is there any guide to recover the system , or detail procedure to boot system again
Thanks,,,

It's not clear if this is a recently installed system that is refusing to boot OR if the system was working fine and crashed.
If it's the former, I would suggest you check the BIOS settings to make sure it's booting from the right hard disk. In any case, the Solaris 10 installation should have writting the GRUB stage1 and stage2 blocks to the beginning of the disk.
If the system crashed and is refusing to boot, you can try to boot from a Solaris 10 installation DVD. Choose the single user shell option and see if it can find your system. You should be able to use format/devfsadm/etc to do the actual troubleshooting. If your disk is still responding, try a `zpool import` to see if there is any data that ZFS can recognize (it usually has many backup uberblocks and disk labels scattered around the disk).

Zerofree: Shrinking ARCH guest VMDK--'remount the root file-system'?

Hi!
[using ZEROFREE]
Getting great results with and extra ARCH install running as a VMDK in Workstation.
REALLY need tips on shrinking the VMDK. obviously have deleted unneeded files
and now rather urgently need to learn what's eluding me so far.
1) zerofree is install IN the virtual machine (VMDK)workstation running on windows 8.
2) Here's the instructions for zerofree:
filesystem has to be unmounted or mounted read-only for zerofree to
work. It will exit with an error message if the filesystem is mounted
writable.
To remount the root file-system readonly, you can first
switch to single user runlevel (telinit 1) then use mount -o remount,ro
filesystem.
As it a VMDK and it's running would the only/best option be to: "remount the root file-system readonly" ??
OR, could i add the VMDK to another running arch system that I do have and NOT mount the VMachine thereby
allowing zero free to run even better on that?
Are both method JUST as efficive at shrinking? My guess would be the remount root file-system as read only
would NOT be as efficient at shrinking.
I could really use a brief walk-through on this as all attempts have failed so far.
I boot the ARCH virtual machine and do what may I ask?
Last edited by tweed (2012-06-05 07:43:41)

How did you use/test unison? In my case, unison, of course, is used in the cpio image, where there are no cache files, because unison has not been run yet in the initcpio image, before it had a chance to be used during boot time, to generate them; and during start up is when it is used; when it creates the archives. ...a circular dependency. Yet, files changed by the user would still need to be traversed to detect changes. So, I think that even providing pre-made cache files would not guarantee that they would be valid at start up, for all configurations of installation. -- I think, though, that these cache files could be copied/saved from the initcpio image to the root (disk and RAM), after they have been created, and used next time by copying them in the initcpio image during each start up. I think $HOME would need to be set.
Unison was not using any cache previously anyway. I was aware of that, but I wanted to prove it by deleting any cache files remaining.
Unison, actually, was slower (4 minutes) the first time it ran in the VM, compared to the physical hardware (3:10s). I have not measured the time for its subsequent runs, but It seemed that it was faster after the first run. The VM was hosted on a newer machine than what I have used so far: the VM host has an i3-3227U at 1.9 GHz CPU with 2 cores/4 threads and 8 GB of RAM (4 GB ware dedicated to the VM); my hardware has a Pentium B940 at 2 GHz CPU with 2 cores/2 threads and 4 GB of RAM.
I could see that, in the VM, rsync and cp were copying faster than on my hardware; they were scrolling quicker.
Grub, initially complains that there is no image, and shows a "Press any key to continue" message; if you continue, the kernel panics.
I'll try using "poll_device()". What arguments does it need? More than just the device; also the number of seconds to wait?
Last edited by AGT (2014-05-20 16:49:35)

Mounting the Root File System into RAM

Hi,
I had been wondering, recently, how can one copy the entire root hierarchy, or wanted parts of it, into RAM, mount it at startup, and use it as the root itself. At shutdown, the modified files and directories would be synchronized back to the non-volatile storage. This synchronization could also be performed manually, before shutting down.
I have now succeeded, at least it seems, in performing such a task. There are still some issues.
For anyone interested, I will be describing how I have done it, and I will provide the files that I have worked with.
A custom kernel hook is used to (overall):
Mount the non-volatile root in a mountpoint in the initramfs. I used /root_source
Mount the volatile ramdisk in a mountpoint in the initramfs. I used /root_ram
Copy the non-volatile content into the ramdisk.
Remount by binding each of these two mountpoints in the new root, so that we can have access to both volumes in the new ramdisk root itself once the root is changed, to synchronize back any modified RAM content to the non-volatile storage medium: /rootfs/rootfs_{source,ram}
A mount handler is set (mount_handler) to a custom function, which mounts, by binding, the new ramdisk root into a root that will be switched to by the kernel.
To integrate this hook into a initramfs, a preset is needed.
I added this hook (named "ram") as the last one in mkinitcpio.conf. -- Adding it before some other hooks did not seem to work; and even now, it sometimes does not detect the physical disk.
The kernel needs to be passed some custom arguments; at a minimum, these are required: ram=1
When shutting down, the ramdisk contents is synchronized back with the source root, by the means of a bash script. This script can be run manually to save one's work before/without shutting down. For this (shutdown) event, I made a custom systemd service file.
I chose to use unison to synchronize between the volatile and the non-volatile mediums. When synchronizing, nothing in the directory structure should be modified, because unison will not synchronize those changes in the end; it will complain, and exit with an error, although it will still synchronize the rest. Thus, I recommend that if you synch manually (by running /root/Documents/rootfs/unmount-root-fs.sh, for example), do not execute any other command before synchronization has completed, because ~/.bash_history, for example, would be updated, and unison would not update this file.
Some prerequisites exist (by default):
Packages: unison(, cp), find, cpio, rsync and, of course, any any other packages which you can mount your root file system (type) with. I have included these: mount.{,cifs,fuse,ntfs,ntfs-3g,lowntfs-3g,nfs,nfs4}, so you may need to install ntfs-3g the nfs-related packages (nfs-utils?), or remove the unwanted "mount.+" entires from /etc/initcpio/install/ram.
Referencing paths:
The variables:
source=
temporary=
...should have the same value in all of these files:
"/etc/initcpio/hooks/ram"
"/root/Documents/rootfs/unmount-root-fs.sh"
"/root/.rsync/exclude.txt" -- Should correspond.
This is needed to sync the RAM disk back to the hard disk.
I think that it is required to have the old root and the new root mountpoints directly residing at the root / of the initramfs, from what I have noticed. For example, "/new_root" and "/old_root".
Here are all the accepted and used parameters:
Parameter Allowed Values Default Value Considered Values Description
root Default (UUID=+,/dev/disk/by-*/*) None Any string The source root
rootfstype Default of "-t <types>" of "mount" "auto" Any string The FS type of the source root.
rootflags Default of "-o <options>" of "mount" None Any string Options when mounting the source root.
ram Any string None "1" If this hook sould be run.
ramfstype Default of "-t <types>" of "mount" "auto" Any string The FS type of the RAM disk.
ramflags Default of "-o <options>" of "mount" "size=50%" Any string Options when mounting the RAM disk.
ramcleanup Any string None "0" If any left-overs should be cleaned.
ramcleanup_source Any string None "1" If the source root should be unmounted.
ram_transfer_tool cp,find,cpio,rsync,unison unison cp,find,cpio,rsync What tool to use to transfer the root into RAM.
ram_unison_fastcheck true,false,default,yes,no,auto "default" true,false,default,yes,no,auto Argument to unison's "fastcheck" parameter. Relevant if ram_transfer_tool=unison.
ramdisk_cache_use 0,1 None 0 If unison should use any available cache. Relevant if ram_transfer_tool=unison.
ramdisk_cache_update 0,1 None 0 If unison should copy the cache to the RAM disk. Relevant if ram_transfer_tool=unison.
This is the basic setup.
Optionally:
I disabled /tmp as a tmpfs mountpoint: "systemctl mask tmp.mount" which executes "ln -s '/dev/null' '/etc/systemd/system/tmp.mount' ". I have included "/etc/systemd/system/tmp.mount" amongst the files.
I unmount /dev/shm at each startup, using ExecStart from "/etc/systemd/system/ram.service".
Here are the updated (version 3) files, archived: Root_RAM_FS.tar (I did not find a way to attach files -- does Arch forums allow attachments?)
I decided to separate the functionalities "mounting from various sources", and "mounting the root into RAM". Currently, I am working only on mounting the root into RAM. This is why the names of some files changed.
Of course, use what you need from the provided files.
Here are the values for the time spend copying during startup for each transfer tool. The size of the entire root FS was 1.2 GB:
find+cpio: 2:10s (2:12s on slower hardware)
unison: 3:10s - 4:00s
cp: 4 minutes (31 minutes on slower hardware)
rsync: 4:40s (55 minutes on slower hardware)
Beware that the find/cpio option is currently broken; it is available to be selected, but it will not work when being used.
These are the remaining issues:
find+cpio option does not create any destination files.
(On some older hardware) When booting up, the source disk is not always detected.
When booting up, the custom initramfs is not detected, after it has been updated from the RAM disk. I think this represents an issue with synchronizing back to the source root.
Inconveniences:
Unison needs to perform an update detection at each startup.
initramfs' ash does not parse wild characters to use "cp".
That's about what I can think of for now.
I will gladly try to answer any questions.
I don't consider myself a UNIX expert, so I would like to know your suggestions for improvement, especially from who consider themselves so.
Last edited by AGT (2014-05-20 23:21:45)

How did you use/test unison? In my case, unison, of course, is used in the cpio image, where there are no cache files, because unison has not been run yet in the initcpio image, before it had a chance to be used during boot time, to generate them; and during start up is when it is used; when it creates the archives. ...a circular dependency. Yet, files changed by the user would still need to be traversed to detect changes. So, I think that even providing pre-made cache files would not guarantee that they would be valid at start up, for all configurations of installation. -- I think, though, that these cache files could be copied/saved from the initcpio image to the root (disk and RAM), after they have been created, and used next time by copying them in the initcpio image during each start up. I think $HOME would need to be set.
Unison was not using any cache previously anyway. I was aware of that, but I wanted to prove it by deleting any cache files remaining.
Unison, actually, was slower (4 minutes) the first time it ran in the VM, compared to the physical hardware (3:10s). I have not measured the time for its subsequent runs, but It seemed that it was faster after the first run. The VM was hosted on a newer machine than what I have used so far: the VM host has an i3-3227U at 1.9 GHz CPU with 2 cores/4 threads and 8 GB of RAM (4 GB ware dedicated to the VM); my hardware has a Pentium B940 at 2 GHz CPU with 2 cores/2 threads and 4 GB of RAM.
I could see that, in the VM, rsync and cp were copying faster than on my hardware; they were scrolling quicker.
Grub, initially complains that there is no image, and shows a "Press any key to continue" message; if you continue, the kernel panics.
I'll try using "poll_device()". What arguments does it need? More than just the device; also the number of seconds to wait?
Last edited by AGT (2014-05-20 16:49:35)

Is it possible to install OL6.2 with UEK using btrfs root file system?

Can we use btrfs for root file system with Oracle Linux?
If yes - how to install it? (OL6.2 installer doesn't offer btrfs within the available file systems).

For what it's worth, I tried the following, which worked:
host: vm022
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
rm public-yum*
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-ol6.repo
+Edit public-yum-ol6.repo and enable [ol6_UEK_latest]+
yum update kernel-uek
yum install btrfs-progs
The system was successfully updated to UEK2 - 2.6.39-100
Boot the system form Fedora 15 Live CD and open a terminal. Enter the following:
su - root
yum install btrfs-progs
lvscan
btrfs-convert /dev/vg_vm022/lv_root
(conversion complete)
mount /dev/vg_vm022/lv_root /mnt
Edit /mnt/etc/fstab and change the root volume filesystem from ext4 to btrfs
umount /mnt
reboot
Start from the OL6.2 DVD in rescue mode. Select continue to let if find the existing Linux system and drop into the shell
chroot /mnt/sysimage
modprobe btrfs
lsmod | grep btrfs
cd /boot
cp initramfs-2.6.39-100.5.1.el6uek.x86_64.img /root
mkinitrd -f -v /boot/initramfs-2.6.39-100.5.1.el6uek.x86_64.img 2.6.39-100.5.1.el6uek.x86_64
exit
unmount /mnt/sysimage
After another restart (it restarted twice doing some volume/label converison - didn't catch it)
mount
/dev/mapper/vg_vm022-lv_root on / type btrfs (rw)
Edited by: Dude on Mar 29, 2012 6:35 PM

Sol10 u8 installed on a ZFS Root File System have different swap needs?

Does Sol10 u8 installed on a ZFS Root File System have different swap needs/processes?
Information:
I've installed Solaris 10 (10/09 s10s_u8wos_08a SPARC, Assembled 16 September 2009) on a half dozen servers and every one of them no longer mount swap at boot.
The install program commented out the old swap entry and created this one:
# grep swap /etc/vfstab
swap - /tmp tmpfs - yes -
Everything works like a champ. I didn't discover the issue until I tried to install some patches and the install failed. It didn't fail because of lack of swap - it refused to run because it found "No swap devices configured".
Here are the symptoms:
# swap -s
total: 183216k bytes allocated + 23832k reserved = 207048k used, 13600032k available
# swap -l
No swap devices configured
# mount | grep swap
/etc/svc/volatile on swap read/write/setuid/devices/xattr/dev=5ac0001 on Mon Apr 19 08:06:45 2010
/tmp on swap read/write/setuid/devices/xattr/dev=5ac0002 on Mon Apr 19 08:07:40 2010
/var/run on swap read/write/setuid/devices/xattr/dev=5ac0003 on Mon Apr 19 08:07:40 2010
#

Hi Nitabills,
I assume that you create a zfs entry for swap with the commande zfs create -V $size
did you launch the command :
swap -a /dev/zvol/dsdk/$ZPOOL/swap
Try this entry below in the vfstab :
/dev/zvol/dsdk/$ZPOOL/swap - - swap - no -

Problem in Reducing the root file system space

Hi All ,
The root file system is reached 86%. We have cleared 1 GB data in /var file system. But the root file system still showing 86%. Please note that the /var file is not seprate file system.
I have furnished the df -h output for your reference. Please provide solution as soon as possible.
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 2.9G 2.4G 404M 86% /
/devices 0K 0K 0K 0% /devices
ctfs 0K 0K 0K 0% /system/contract
proc 0K 0K 0K 0% /proc
mnttab 0K 0K 0K 0% /etc/mnttab
swap 30G 1.0M 30G 1% /etc/svc/volatile
objfs 0K 0K 0K 0% /system/object
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s3 6.7G 3.7G 3.0G 56% /usr
/platform/SUNW,Sun-Fire-T200/lib/libc_psr/libc_psr_hwcap1.so.1
2.9G 2.4G 404M 86% /platform/sun4v/lib/libc_psr.so.1
/platform/SUNW,Sun-Fire-T200/lib/sparcv9/libc_psr/libc_psr_hwcap1.so.1
2.9G 2.4G 404M 86% /platform/sun4v/lib/sparcv9/libc_psr.so.1
fd 0K 0K 0K 0% /dev/fd
swap 33G 3.5G 30G 11% /tmp
swap 30G 48K 30G 1% /var/run
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s4 45G 30G 15G 67% /www
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s5 2.9G 1.1G 1.7G 39% /export/home
Regards,
R. Rajesh Kannan.

I don't know if the root partition filling up was sudden, and thus due to the killing of an in-use file, or some other problem. However, I have noticed that VAST amounts of space is used up just through the normal patching process.
After I installed Sol 10 11/06, my 12GB root partition was 48% full. Now, about 2 months later, after applying available patches, it is 53% full. That is about 600 MB being taken up by the superseded versions of the installed patches. This is ridiculous. I have patched using Sun Update Manager, which by default does not use the patchadd -d option that would not back up old patch versions, so the superseded patches are building up in /var, wasting massive amounts of space.
Are Solaris users just supposed to put up with this, or is there some other way we should manage patches? It is time consuming and dangerous to manually clean up the old patch versions by using patchrm to delete all versions of a patch and then using patchadd to re-install only the latest revision.
Thank you.

Device id of the root file system changes

I have noticed that sometimes the device id of the root file system changes (it typically get incremented by one). This seems to happen after an abnormal shutdown. After a normal shutdown and reboot the device id reverts back to what it was previously.
/ is on a local disk (not NFS or anything like that) and I'm talking about the device id you can obtain via the following command:
stat / | cut -d' ' -f1
Any idea why this is happening?

boot up a (any) live CD, cp -a, generate a new grub.cfg/adjust menu.lst and don't forget to update your fstab - done.
Just done it myself.

Changing the root file system device to another device.

Hi all,
I have my arch root file system on /dev/sda1 ext4 and /home on /dev/sda6 , I need to change root device to /dev/sda5. Can I do it just by copying / to
/dev/sda6 and reinstalling grub? Please help me if anyone tried it.
Thanks & Regards

boot up a (any) live CD, cp -a, generate a new grub.cfg/adjust menu.lst and don't forget to update your fstab - done.
Just done it myself.

SOLVED: kernel loads, but doesn't have a root file system

Hi,
The system is an Asus X202E. It does UEFI and has a GPT partition system. I've gotten through that part. And it is clear to me that the kernel loads.
It's the next step that's giving me grief. I've tried this with two bootloaders: gummiboot and rEFInd.
With gummiboot, the kernel panics because it can't mount the root file system. With rEFInd, it gets to the intial ramdisk and then drops me to a shell, apparently because the root file system is set to null, and it obviously can't mount that as "real root".
Here is what I posted on the Arch mailing list, documenting that I have indeed specified the correct root (I'm copying this from the email, eliding the unfortunate line wraps):
bridge-live# cat /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
Title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrc /initramfs-linux.img
options root=PARTUUID=d5bb2ad1-9e7d-4c75-b9b6-04865dd77782
bridge-live# ls -l /dev/disk/by-partuuid
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 0ab4d458-cd09-4bfb-a447-5f5fa66332e2 -> ../../sda6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 3e12caeb-1424-451c-898e-a4ff05eab48d -> ../../sda7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 432a977b-f26d-4e75-b9ee-bf610ee6f4a4 -> ../../sda3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 95a1d2c2-393a-4150-bbd2-d8e7179e7f8a -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 a4b797d9-0868-4bd1-a92d-f244639039f5 -> ../../sda4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 d5bb2ad1-9e7d-4c75-b9b6-04865dd77782 -> ../../sda8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 ed04135b-bd79-4c7c-b3b5-b0f9c2fe6826 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 f64f82a7-8f2b-4748-88b1-7b0c61e71c70 -> ../../sda5
The root partition is supposed to be /dev/sda8, that is:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 15 19:26 d5bb2ad1-9e7d-4c75-b9b6-04865dd77782 -> ../../sda8
So the correct PARTUUID followed by the one I have specified in
arch.conf is:
d5bb2ad1-9e7d-4c75-b9b6-04865dd77782
d5bb2ad1-9e7d-4c75-b9b6-04865dd77782
I'm guessing that this is really the same problem with both gummiboot and with rEFInd, but don't really know. It's clear to me that the initrd is not being correctly constructed. So I removed /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and did, as per the Arch wiki,
pacman -Syyu mkinitcpio linux udev
No joy.
I don't even know which way to go at this point. If I even knew how to tell it where the real disk is in the initial ram disk shell, that would help. Better of course, would be actually solving the problem.
Thanks!
Last edited by n4rky (2013-04-17 21:41:36)

I have made extremely limited progress on this issue.
My previous attempt to specify the root partition in mkinitcpio.conf was insufficient. Furthermore, this is no place--despite the documentation--for the orthodoxy about using UUIDs rather than the straight /dev/sdx. In my case:
root=/dev/sda8
and run
mkinitcpio -p linux
It still drops me into the shell at boot. I can do
mount /dev/sda8 /new_root/
and exit the shell. It still won't believe it has the root device and drops me back in. I just exit.
At this point, for a very brief moment, things look promising. It appears to be starting normally. Then, gdm.service, NetworkManager.service, and dbus.service all fail to start. There may be others but the screen goes by too quickly. At this point, it hangs trying to initialize the pacman keyring and all I can do is CTRL-ALT-DEL.
It occurred to me that this might extend to the rEFInd configuration and so I modified it to also use /dev/sda8 rather than the UUID, but this made no difference. Trying to boot via gummiboot still yields the previously specified kernel panic.

Solaris 10:unable to mount a solaris root file system

Hi All,
I am trying to install Solaris 10 X86 on a Proliant DL385 Server it has a Smart array 6i, I have download the driver from the HP web site, on booting up the installation CD 1, adding the device driver, it sees the device but now says it can��t mount the device. Any clues what I need to do?
Screen Output:
Unable to mount a Solaris root file system from the device
DISK: Target 0, Bios primary drive - device 0x80
on Smart Array 6i Controller on Board PCI bus 2, at Dev 4
Error message from mount::
/pci@0,0/pci1022,7450@7/pcie11,4091@4/cmdk@0,0:a: can't open - no vtoc
any assistence would be appreciated.

Hi,
I read the Message 591 (Agu 2003) and the problem is quite the same. A brief description: I have aLaptop ASUS with HDD1 60GB and a USB storage HDD (in next HDD2) 100GB. I installed Solaris 10 x86 on HDD2 (partition c2t0d0s0). At the end of installation I removed the DVD and using BIOS features I switched the boot to HDD2. All ok; I received the SUN Blue Screen and I choose the active Solaris option; but at the beginning of the boot I received the following error message
Screen Output:
Unable to mount a Solaris root file system from the device
DISK: Target 0: IC25N060 ATMR04-0 on Board ....
Error message from mount::
/pci@0,0/pci-ide2,5/ide@1/cmdk@0,0:a: can't open
any assistence would be appreciated.
Regards

Programmatic interface to get zone's root file system

Hi,
I am a newcomer to solaris zones. Is there any programmatic (C API) way to know the path to root file system of a zone given its name, from the global zone?
Thanks!

A truss of zoneadm list -cv shows a bunch of zone related calls like:
zone_lookup()
zone_list()
zone_getattr()
Using the truss output as an example and including /usr/include/sys/zones.h and linking to libzonecfg
(and maybe libzoneinfo) seems like a fairly straight-forward path to getting the info you are looking for.
You could also parse /etc/zones/index
which is (on my s10_63 machine) a colon seperated flat file containing [zone:install state:root path] that looks like:
global:installed:/
demo1:installed:/zones/demo1
demo2:installed:/zones/demo2
demo3:installed:/zones/demo3
foo:installed:/zones/foo
ldap1:installed:/zones/ldap1
Neither of these methods are documented, so they are certainly subject to change or removal.
Good luck!
-William Hathaway

Archive Repository - Content Server or Root File System?

Hi All,
We are in the process of evaluating a storage solution for archiving and I would like to hear your experiences and recommendations. I've ruled out 3rd-party solutions such as IXOS as over kill for our requirement. That leaves us with the i5/OS root file system or the SAP Content Server in either a Linux partition or on a Windows server. Has anyone done archiving with a similar setup? What issues did you face? I don't plan to replicate archive objects via MIMIX.
Is anyone running the SAP Content Server in a Linux partition? I'd like to know your experience with this even if you don't use the Content Server for archiving. We use the Content Server (currently on Windows) for attaching files to SAP documents (e.g., Sales Documents) via Generic Object Services (GOS). While I lean towards running separate instances of the Content Server for Archiving and GOS, I would like to run them both in the same Linux LPAR.
TIA,
Stan

Hi Stanley,
If you choose to store your data archive files at the file system level, is that a secure enough environment? A third party certified storage solution provides a secure system where the archive files cannot be altered and also provides a way to manage the files over the years until they have met their retention limit.
Another thing to consider, just because the end users may not need access to the archived data, your company might need to be able to access the data easily due to an audit or law suit situation.
I am a SAP customer whose job function is the technical lead for my company's SAP data archiving projects, not a 3rd party storage solution provider , and I highly recommend a certified storage solution for compliance reasons.
Also, here is some information from the SAP Data Archiving web pages concerning using SAP Content Server for data archive files:
10. Is the SAP Content Server suitable for data archiving?
Up to and including SAP Content Server 6.20 the SAP CS is not designed to handle large files, which are common in data archiving. The new SAP CS 6.30 is designed to also handle large files and can therefore technically be used to store archive files. SAP CS does not support optical media. It is especially important to regularly run backups on the existing data!
Recommendation for using SAP CS for data archiving:
      Store the files on SAP CS in a decompressed format (make settings at the repository)
       Install SAP CS and SAP DB on one server
       Use SAP CS for Unix (runtime tests to see how SAP CS for Windows behaves with large files still have to be carried out)
Best Regards,
Karin Tillotson

Backup and restore Root File system

Hi
Can I take backup of Root File system using ufsdump and later restore it (Root file system) completely using ufsrestore?
Please give me the steps or a link
Thanks in advance
Ashraf.

In short yes. But the steps depends on where you are going to store the backup and if you are running Sparc or x86 and what you do with your disk in between.
Boot in single user.
example# ufsdump 0cfu /dev/rmt/0 /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s0
/dev/rmt/0 (tape) can be another partions file /backup/root_backup
For restore it must be safeest to boot from CD.
Mount your disk to restore to under /a
cd /a
ufsrestore rf /dev/rmt/0 (or your file /backup/root_backup)
If the partition is reformatted you may have to install new bootblocks.
Please read some from docs.sun.com
This is just an advice, not detailed workorder.....
/Gunnar

Restoring root file system from netbackup

Recently one of the hard disk containing root file system in my T2000 got many hard errors suddenly but the system continued to run. I dont have os mirroring. So I took backup of the root file system using veritas netbackup & restored those in the second hard disk. Also installed boot block for the same. I tried booting from the second hard disk & it booted, came to the prompt. But i found that most of the commands are not working. I tried df -h & it gave me error message like "unable to open /etc/mnttab". Is this approach incorrect?
My guess is that it doesnt work as i dint set partition table same for both the disks.

You need to use the baremetal backup/restore options with Netbackup to make backups of your operating system. It's generally recommended that you make a backup of your OS in single user mode, or booted from alternate media, so that you don't make backups of open files.
Another backup method would be to use something like ufsdump for ufs filesystems, or ZFS send/receive
and when you do restore, first boot in single user mode from cd so that you can update the files that still point to the old disk location, like the /etc/vfstab (for ufs) and to update the device paths with a reconfiguration reboot.
Edited by: 3sth3r on Jan 25, 2012 1:04 AM

Automated install Arch x86_64 root-file system the "Raspberry" way..

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