SUMMARY: EMERGENCY: HOW to copy a ufs file system to another slice I cannot mount?

From: TED BACKHERMS (DMVTJB@dmv.state.va.us)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2000 - 04:02:35 CDT


The final solution was:

mount -m /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /mnt # note the -m which got me around the read-only /etc/mnttab on disk1, that was what I did not know about.
cd /
tar cvf /tmp/etc.tar etc
cd /mnt
tar xvf /tmp/etc.tar
vi /mnt/etc/vfstab # fix to point to c0t0d0s0 instead of c0t1d0s0
init 6

Thanks to all who helped me get this fixed. I only ended up with two road trips (100 miles, both near each other).

Note:

dd was a good idea, but the different geometries of the two disks killed disk0 on two of the machines. The vfstab on disk1 already pointed to file systems on disk0, so when dd killed disk 0, I could not boot from either disk. I will have to read up on dd to see how to make adjustments for differing disk geometries.

THIS IS WHAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM:

file system: /var/http/htdocs/intranet/ses # our web files for the sysadmin intranet.
two links in this file system: 'rootlink' linked to / and 'etc' linked to /etc.
THEN: mv /var/http.../rootlink /var/http/htdocs/intranet/ses/secure #note: secure WAS NOT ACTUALLY a directory as I thought, so now I have a LINK called secure which points to /
THEN: mv /var/http.../etc /var/http/htdocs/intranet/ses/secure # this moved my link called 'etc' from /var/http... to /var/http.../ses/secure, or into the root file system wiping out the real /etc and making it a recursive link pointing to itself. No one could login after that so we spent 4 hours calling the managers and rebooting each server onto disk1. 80 servers. Disk1 is a ufsdump clone of disk0.

After all sites had closed for the day, I mounted disk0 on /mnt, tar'd up /etc on disk1 and untarred it to /mnt/etc, which was still a link pointing to /etc on disk1, untarred /etc over top of itself. No harm done yet.
THEN I edited /mnt/etc/vfstab to point to disk0, inadvertantly editing /etc/vfstab on disk1 instead, through the link called 'etc' on disk0.
THEN I tried to boot from disk0, but had only a recursive link as /etc>>/etc.
THEN I booted back to disk1, but the vfstab pointed to disk0. The result was a system with root in read-only mode and me unable to mount the other disk to fix things until someone mentioned mount -m.
THEN I yelled for help and you guys came through.

Again, thanks to all for your excellent help and concern. I could not have made it without your help. I've only been at this for 2 ½ years and have much to learn yet.

S
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