"Please mount volume 2 on /dev/rmt0.1" message during mksysb restore

UNIX AIX
1

Dear all

First of all, my English not so good.

We have p52a (production server) and p52a (test server). Tape drives are VXA2.

When both servers were AIX 5.3, mksysb on production server and restoring to test server was OK.

The production server was AIX 5.3 and recently upgraded to AIX 6.1 TL06 sp05 by migration install.

when I did mksysb on production server and then restored to test server, the following message appeared and got stuck:

"Please mount volume 2 on /dev/rmt0.1"
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Of course only one tape media was used and successful when I did mksysb. There was no error log.

I tried different tape medias and changing tape device "block size" also but results were same.

Moreover, I tried mkdvd backup on production server and restored it to test server, but it also didn't work.

When I tried lsmksysb, it shows the content of os backup for a while, but got stuck at following:

1828485 ./var/adm/messages.1.gz
0 ./var/adm/ml
102 ./var/adm/ml/rc.ml.log
102 ./var/adm/ml/rc.ml.log.previous
0 ./var/adm/nim
Please mount volume 2 on /dev/rmt0.1
... and press Enter to continue Out of memory, malloc() failed.
23288448 ./var/adm/pacct

So, I assume that os backup itself has problem.

I installed AIX 6.1 (new & completed install) and mksysb on test server, then restored it to test server itself was OK.

Please find an attached file for your reference.

Actually, I did mksysb and restoring over 10 years but didn't see this kind of problem.

Anyone can help me?

Thanks in advance!

2

An mksysb image is basically a savevg rootvg , along with some additional data to make it bootable and installable. For the savevg command to succeed it needs to know exactly your VG layout down to the single filesystems. Have you tried mkszfile before taking the mksysb (or calling mksysb with the "-i" flag, which has the same effect)? Maybe your rootvg layout (in terms LVs and their sizes) have changed? This can have strange effects.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

3

Have you checked the block size of tape?
Also on the other hand, did you check the driver's compatibility with AIX6.1?

4

Thank you bakunin

Yes, I used -i flag for mksysb.

---------- Post updated at 02:15 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:11 PM ----------

Thank you ibmtech!

Yes, I have also changed block size of tapes equally, 1024 and 0
But I haven't checked the tape driver's compatibility with AIX6.1
Doesn't AIX6.1 have proper driver for VXA2 tape drive?
I dont' know what is the driver for VXA2 though.