E Expert recovery

With expert recovery, you can repair aspects of the operating system on a damaged root disk using an Ignite-UX server or HP-UX OE media to boot the system. There are minor differences in message content between using a server or media, but the process is functionally identical. When using media, enabling and using networking is strictly optional.

Expert recovery can be useful if your system gets compromised or becomes corrupt and does not boot to a login prompt, or if the system boots but critical operating system files are corrupted. At that point, it might be useful to restore system elements made available by booting from an Ignite-UX server or OE media.

While it might be possible to repair LVM and VxVM problems, that would require in-depth knowledge of those subsystems and is not documented here.

Expert recovery is not useful in recovering from hardware failures.

Expert recovery preparation

The more you know about the system disk and its layout before you encounter major damage or corruption, the easier it will be for you to recover.

Much of this information, including file system types, can be obtained by accessing your online system manifest, either using Ignite-UX or by reading the hardcopy that came with your system.

Before you attempt to recover an HP-UX system, you must gather the following information:

•The version of HP-UX on the system you are attempting to recover.

IMPORTANT: The HP-UX version of the system to recover must match the HP-UX version on the boot server or OE media. For example, use HP-UX 11i v1 (B.11.11) OE media to recover an HP-UX 11i v1 (B.11.11) system.

•The hardware path of the root file system on the disk (that is, what file system you will be checking/repairing using fsck.)

•Whether you have an LVM, VxVM, or whole-disk system.

The Expert recovery procedure

The following is an example procedure for using expert recovery. Depending on your version of HP-UX, your disk layout, and whether the client is Integrity or PA-RISC, the details of these screens might vary.

IMPORTANT: This procedure requires the commands fsck and mount running successfully on the system disk.

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