The other day I lost my system disc on one of my DEC Unix 3.2G
systems.  I went to the backup tape, because we are so good about
doing backups, and tried a restore via a boot from the installation
CD (3.2G).  We use the vdump utility for backups.
It seems that the vrestore command contained on the installation CD
does not work - some error about version numbers.  So, I went and
grabbed the 4.0B Installation CD and booted from that.  The problem
there was that I was not able to mount any of the filesystems from
the system disc and, consequently, I could not perform a vrestore.
The system disc is actually a mirrored RAID array on a StorageWorks
230 controller (KZPSC, or some such thing).  It's funny, because I
could run a disklabel -r on the system disc without problems, but
not mount any of the filesystems...  some error about the device
not being addressable or some such thing...
I ended up re-installing the OS, which pissed off a lot of users
because of the extended downtime, and restored individual customized files
using the newly installed vrestore command.
So, the question is: What is the most reliable way to restore a system
disc in 3.2G?  What's the point of putting a version of vrestore on the
CD that I can't use?
-- 
Rob Naccarato           "I know I'm a lot of feathers,
Sys Admin               but not much chicken."
Sheridan College                         -KM
Oakville, Ont. Canada
Received on Fri Aug 22 1997 - 14:21:17 NZST