Changes between Version 2 and Version 3 of BootProcessUnraveled

Timestamp:

May 27, 2008, 5:45:24 PM (16 years ago)

Author:

Bruno Cornec

Comment:

OBDR description

BootProcessUnraveled

@@ -1 @@
-== Introduction ==
+= Introduction =
 
 
@@ -32 +32 @@
 
 From a bigger picture point of view, looking into installers of other systems such as but certainly not limited to Debian and live systems like knoppix might prove useful to come up with a more streamlined, fool-proof and dynamically adjusted boot process that ensures that everything works as intended even in situations where the hardware we are running on is pretty much a moving target.
+
+= OBDR =
+
+As of 2.2.6, mondorescue is supporting the OBDR function of some tape drives from HP (Cf: [http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/drs/qa.html OBDR FAQ]).
+
+This has been done by studying the OBDR support of another GPL DR solution [http://mkcdrec.ota.be/ mkCDrec].
+As I've not found anywhere else a precise doc on how to do that, I'll put my findings here:
+
+OBDR is a hardware function that will allow the administrator to press a key (typically F8 on the drive I used for these test) in order to emulate a USB CD from an ISO image stored on the tape. Once the system has booted on this image, it can launch the recovery process, taking the remaining data from the following portions of the tape.
+
+An OBDR tape is in fact made of 3 parts:
+
+* an empty (or maybe can be used for something else) 10 KiB zone (block size of 512 bytes), made typically with
+{{{
+dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nts0 bs=512 count=20
+}}}
+* a bootable ISO image stored as is (block size of 2048 bytes), made typically with
+{{{
+dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/nts0 bs=2048
+}}}
+* Finally the data stored in the format expected by the software present on the bootable image