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From: weber@brand.UUCP (Allan G. Weber)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Question on restoring Ultrix root partition
Message-ID: <1085@brand.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-May-87 12:35:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: brand.1085
Posted: Mon May  4 12:35:42 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 6-May-87 04:39:56 EDT
Distribution: na
Organization: USC Signal and Image Processing Institute, Los Angeles
Lines: 33

I could use some advice on how to restore a destroyed root partition
on a MicroVAX-II running Ultrix-32m 1.2A.  The root partition has
gotten bashed badly enough that when booting, fsck gives up while
checking the root partition and the system start trying to boot all
over again, and again, and again, etc.  I have a backup of the disk
and all I want to do is get something running to the point where I can
read the root partition from tape back onto disk.  Unfortunately,
there is nothing in the Ultrix documentation about how to restore a
damaged root partition.

I tried doing basically the same things that are described in the
installation notes for 4.2BSD and Sun Unix.  I followed the normal
Ultrix installation procedure up to the point where it had copied a
minisystem to the disk.  After booting that it asked if I wanted to
procede with the installation, and I said no, which got me a # prompt
and a message to halt the system or something like that.  At that
point, I figured I could create the root partition and restore the
files from tape but "newfs" and "restore" didn't seem to be there.
Neither was "ls" so I couldn't figure out what was there.

This has happened before, and at that time a DEC field service person
who replaced the disk drive called their Ultrix support people and
asked what I should do.  DEC's answer was to do a full installation of
the complete Ultrix (/ and /usr) from the distribution tape.  After
booting the new system, restore the backup root partion to another
partition somewhere, and copy files from the restored one to the new
one until it's set up the way it was before.  Then restore the backup
/usr in place of the new one.  I make no claims to be a Unix wizard,
but this seems like a stupid way to do things.

				Allan Weber
				weber%brand@usc-oberon.arpa
				...sdcrdcf!usc-oberon!brand!weber