----- The Original Message -----
>From reynolds Fri Jul 11 14:24:21 1997
Subject: Miniroot restore failures
Hi.
This is an obscure one, so hang on...
We use SPARCstation 5s as a production front end, so they all get
loaded with the same OS. We are using SunOS 4.1.3_U1. Our procedure
is to boot up miniroot on the local disk, then run a Bourne shell
script to newfs the disk partitions and restore from dump files to /,
/usr, and /usr1 (local libraries and applications). The miniroot's
partition ( /dev/sd0b ) is up to 200MB, depending on the disk size.
As the product evolves, more and more stuff gets added to our standard
OS. I am running into problems where the shell script aborts, and the
screen starts filling with exec error messages.
Sometimes I get '/: File system full' messages, and restore tells me
that the dumpfile looks corrupted. If I boot the system normally, the
dumpfile is fine.
It may be related to the size of the restore files, as I have been
seeing it more often as the size of the /usr and /usr1 dumpfiles
increases. it doesn't seem to matter how big the miniroot's partition is.
Anybody want to hazard a guess on this one? Thanks; I'll summarize if
something this offbeat is of interest to the collective.
John Reynolds If your position is everywhere,
Applied Materials your momentum is zero.
2901 Patrick Henry Dr. MS 5502
Santa Clara CA 95054 - Congressional corollary
(408) 235-6352 to Heisenberg's Principle.
reynolds@acetsw.amat.com
----- End Message -----
The winning entry :
Glenn Satchell - Uniq Professional Services <Glenn.Satchell@Uniq.com.au>
Hi John,
Seen this one before and I can tell you exactly what the problem is...
The miniroot filesystem is only about 10Mb in size, regardless of the
size of sd0b partition. You can verify this by putting a copy of df
into the miniroot and running it. So, we only have less than 1MB of
free space in miniroot.
When restore runs it creates a temporary file in /tmp (in the
miniroot). This file can grow to greater than 1MB and fill up the
available space in the miniroot.
So how to make more space in miniroot?
The brute force method is to delete some big file(s) and the biggest on
is /vmunix. Once miniroot is loaded vmunix is not used again. (how
often do you reboot the miniroot without going back to boot cdrom?)
I've used this so many times it's standard practise when restoring
anything on SunOS 4.1.x now.
Alternatively you could make /tmp a link to a filesystem on another
partition on the disk.
regards,
--
Glenn Satchell glenn@uniq.com.au www.uniq.com.au | Windows:
Uniq Professional Services Pty Ltd ACN 056 279 335 |
PO Box 70, Paddington, NSW 2021, (Sydney) Australia | Just another pane
Phone 02 9380 6360 Pager 016 287 000 Fax 02 9380 6416 | in the glass...
VISIT OUR WEB SITE http://www.uniq.com.au
Turns out that restoring 500 MB is just too big, even without the
/vmunix file, so I've broken it down into two dump files of 200 and 300
MBs, which work just fine.
Thanks to all who responded :
James Hsieh <jhsieh@soe.ucsd.edu>
Jim Harmon <jharmon@telecnnct.com>
Francis Liu <fxl@pulse.itd.uts.edu.au>
sunman@oak.london.waii.com (Robert.Gillespie@waii.com)
vqh@dwrock.dw.lucent.com
Glenn Satchell - Uniq Professional Services <Glenn.Satchell@Uniq.com.au>
nobroin@esoc.esa.de (Niall O Broin)
aditya@sybase.com (Aditya Gurajada)
We now return you to our regularly scheduled mailing list, which is
already in progress...
John Reynolds
Applied Materials Time travel means never having to say
2901 Patrick Henry Dr. MS 5502 you will have been going to be sorry.
Santa Clara CA 95054
(408) 235-6352
reynolds@acetsw.amat.com
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