Obtain SnapOS from working unit?

[starman7]

Is there a way to get the OS/_sup from a working unit (for later use).

[blue68f100]

Yes, but it depends if the snap being updated has the OS stored in flashram. The OS takes up ~25meg of the disk.

The instructions are located in the wiki section of procooling. You can copy the boot tracks to a file or to another drive.

[shadowman]

I have tried that procedure in the Wiki section. It does not work...at least for me.

SM

[shadowman]

I nearly lost my SNAP OS on my original MATOR 80gb. The drive was making a clicking noise and BIOS had trouble detecting the drive. I recalled a little trick a friend told me about how to restore temporary access to clicking hard drive.

You first need to place the drive in a antistatic bag and make to sure remove as much air as possible from the bag. Seal it up with tape. Place the drive in the freezer for 15-20minutes. Setup your cloning station using Digital Dolly, Knoppix and/or other cloning software. Remove your drive and install quickly to perform your cloning process on your spare hard drive. Even though the cloning process may stall after 5-10 minutes, because the hard drive will begin to thaw out. Don't panic you only need the first 20-25 megs of the hidden boot partition of the SNAP drive (this is where the SNAP OS resides). Go ahead and stop the cloning process. Stick in your newly cloned drive. If you see blinking lights go ahead and get the troubleshooting guide to see what they are. Login to your SNAP server and most likely you need to format and reinit your new drive using Config Debug of SNAP.

Now if I could only get down the procedure to copy the boot tracks if this drive does fail on me and I can be prepared in the future. I have tried to no avail.

This forum is great. A lot of experience from all types of problem and solutions that is a great arsenal of knowledge for any technician.

SM

[blue68f100]

The bigest mistake people make is not knowing who's on first or is whats on second.

The procedure for copying the "boot tracks to img file" is posted in the wiki section.

It's not that much difference than copying disk to disk. Just need to change the " of " (output file) and tell it how much of the disk you want. The default is the complete disk.

"dd if=/dev/hdb of=/mnt/filename bs=1024 count=25"

[shadowman]

Blue,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I have carefully input each of the command strings from the Wiki section.

I will post the exact error messages I receive. The version of Knoppix I'm using is 5. I hope that is not creating the errors for me.


SM

[shadowman]

I finally got the copy boot track procedure to work.

I kept getting an error

root@1[knoppix]# mount -t auto /dev/hdc /mnt
mount: /dev/hdc already mounted or /mnt busy

(hdc = my FAT32 hard drive for image of SNAP OS boot tracks)

So I went back to the desktop and right clicked the hard drive with FAT32 partition and selected unmount. Then I performed "mount -t auto /dev/hdc /mnt" command this time it worked. The rest of the procedure worked without a problem.

It appears the Knoppix automatically mounts all partitions in sequential order.

I was using Knoppix version 5.0

I do have one question, can any SNAP OS work on any SNAP model?




SM

[shadowman]

I finally did get the SNAP copy boot track procedure to work.

I figured out to unmont my FAT32 hard drive where you are to copy the SNAP OS boot tracks. Then used the "mount -t auto /dev/hda1 /mnt" command with no error.

It appears that Knoppix automatically mounts all partitions sequentially.

I do have one question, are SNAP OS's swappable for all SNAP Server models?


SM

[shadowman]

sorry for the double post....double clicked too many

[blue68f100]

These procedure were written with v4 Knoppix. There is also a live Digiral Dolly CD that makes things easier.

The snap os used to upgrade snaps (*.sup) works with all Snap OS units. There are 2 different image files used for recovery.

[fizban]

I thought that freezer concept was a myth !