Creating emergency recovery tapes

Emergency recovery tapes allow you to restore your system and its data to the configuration stored on the media. To create emergency recovery tapes:

1. Locate and label tapes for this procedure. Include the system name, date the tapes were created, and sequence number.

   The number of tapes needed varies according to the size and configuration of your system.

2. Switch from the graphical environment to the system console, by pressing <Ctrl><Alt><Esc>. Log in to the system console as root.

3. If the system is already in single-user mode, skip to step 5. Otherwise, make sure there are no active users on the system. Enter:
   
   who

4. If root is the only user logged in, bring the system to single-user mode with this command:
   
   shutdown -y -g0 -i1

   If other users are listed, bring the system to single-user mode with this command:
   
   shutdown -y -g300 -i1

   The -g300 flag in this command allows users 5 minutes (300 seconds) to close their files and log out. A broadcast message from root provides warnings that the system is coming down.

5. At the single-user prompt (#), insert the first emergency recovery tape into the appropriate cartridge tape drive.
   

6. Create the emergency recovery tapes using either step a or step b.

   
   a.

   Use this step only if only one hard disk is installed, and this disk also contains partitions for operating systems other than UnixWare 7. Enter:
   
   /sbin/emergency_rec -e tape tapesize

   The -e option tells emergency_rec to back up the entire primary hard disk.

   tape is the tape drive location of your inserted tape (ctape1 or ctape2).

   tapesize is the size of the tape specified either as a number of 512-byte blocks or as a number with a suffix of k, M or G to indicate kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes. For example, a tapesize of 512000 or 250M would indicate that the tape can hold 250MB of data. If the hard disk is larger than the capacity of a single tape, you are prompted to insert additional tapes as needed.

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   NOTE: You can omit tapesize if the capacity of a single tape is larger than the size of the entire hard disk.

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   Wait for this command to finish processing and then go to Step 7.
   

   
   b.

   Use this step for a multiple hard disk system or a single disk system that does not meet the conditions in Step 8a.

   Enter:
   
   /sbin/emergency_rec tape

   tape is the tape drive location of your inserted tape (ctape1 or ctape2).

   The emergency_rec command (without the -e option) backs up:

   • all UnixWare 7 partitions on your primary hard disk

   • the /home, /home2, /var, and /usr filesystems from the secondary hard disk, if they exist there

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     NOTE: The emergency_rec command does not back up any other UnixWare 7 filesystems on the secondary disk, nor any filesystem on additional hard disks.

     To back up these filesystems and volumes, see ``After creating emergency recovery tapes''.

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     You are prompted to insert additional tapes as needed.

   
   

7. Remove the last tape from the tape drive.

8. Store the emergency recovery tapes with the emergency recovery floppy disks in a secure location.