18 October 2010

Disk Cloning in Solaris

Disk Cloning in Solaris:

A few assumptions:
        master disk:  c0t0d0
                \--> disk already configured and in use
        alternate:    c0t1d0
                \--> disk not configured and will become a clone of master
        configured slices:  0 1 3 4
                \--> 0=/, 1=swap, 3=/usr, 4=/var
        your path:    PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
                \--> your path must contain at least the above
        disk geometry:
                \--> the disk geometry of both devices should be the same or
                     you should be aware of the potential issues otherwise

1) use prtvtoc and fmthard to partition the second disk

        prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 | fmthard -s - /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2

2) newfs the slices on the second disk

        echo "y" | newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0
        for i in 3 4 ; do echo "newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s${i}"
                echo "y" | newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s${i} ; done

3) mount up the root slice, etc, of the alternate disk under /mnt

        [ ! -d /mnt ] && mkdir /mnt
        mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 /mnt

4) change directory to /mnt and mirror the master disk

        cd /mnt ; ufsdump 0uf - /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 | ufsrestore rf -
        rm restoresymtable
        [ ! -d /mnt/usr ] && mkdir /mnt/usr
        mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3 /mnt/usr
        [ ! -d /mnt/var ] && mkdir /mnt/var
        mount /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4 /mnt/var
        cd /mnt/usr ; ufsdump 0uf - /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 | ufsrestore rf -
        rm restoresymtable
        cd /mnt/var ; ufsdump 0uf - /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4 | ufsrestore rf -
        rm restoresymtable

5) update the vfstab to be appropriate for the cloned (alternate) disk

        sed < /mnt/etc/vfstab -e s/c0t0d0/c0t1d0/g > /tmp/vfstab.new
        mv /tmp/vfstab.new /mnt/etc/vfstab
                # you should probably verify the contents of /tmp/vfstab.new
                # before moving it into place

6) unmount all new filesystems and fsck each new FS slice

        cd / ; umount /mnt
        fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0
        fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s3
        fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s4

7) run installboot on the alternate disk to create the bootblock

        installboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0

        Note: on Sol10x86 (or previous versions with Grub)(added by colleague (Bill))
        /sbin/installgrub /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0

8) reboot your box and boot from your alternate disk... enjoy



Some details on the various steps and points of consideration:

        step 1) prtvtoc will print out the disk's partition table for use
                in creating the slices for the alternate disk

                fmthard will update the VTOC of a disk; when -s is specified,
                the next option specifies the datafile to read the VTOC info
                from, though in this case it is reading STDIN from prtvtoc;
                it should be noted that the drive geometry should be identical
                as these two commands together will overwrite slice two of the
                alternate disk

        step 2) newfs creates a filesystem on the specified device (ufs by
                default; one could alternately use an appropriate mkfs
                command here)

        step 3) mounting the alternate disk so that the master disk can be
                mirrored to it

        step 4) ufsdump will dump the contents of the specified device out to
                the file specified prior to the device being dumped (in this
                case, STDIN); the options are specified in BSD styling, not
                requiring a hyphen preceding; option 0 states to dump the
                entire file system, u updates /etc/dumpdates with relevant
                dump information, f states to dump to a specific file which
                is seen above as - (STDIN)

                ufsrestore will restore the contents of a filesystem; option
                r performs a recursive restoration of a filesystem relative
                to the current working directory, f specifies the dumpfile
                to restore from though in this case is - (STDIN) from ufsdump

        step 5) the vfstab on the new device needs to be updated so that the
                appropriate filesystems are mounted relative to the alternate
                disk (failure to do so will cause the box not to boot if one
                tries to boot from this device); the sed command is simply
                changing any instances of c0t0d0 (master disk) to c0t1d0
                (the alternate disk) on the copy of vfstab on the new disk

        step 6) fsck is run to simply check to make sure the filesystems are
                sane and usable on the alternate disk

        step 7) installboot will install a bootblock to the specified slice
                so that one may boot the system from it; the option
                "/usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk contains the
                bootblock code for the master disk; this step must be
                completed otherwise the system will not boot from the
                alternate disk
                (Addition by colleague (Bill)) 
                Sol10 x86 (and prev): Grub is used.  These two, "stages", 
                one to load grub,  and the other to load the OS boot code, 
                are stored in the MBR by installgrub.

see also:
    Disk Cloning in FreeBSD
    Disk Cloning in Linux