Subject: Using "dd" to Clone Partitions on a VIO Server

Audience: All

Date: April 12, 2006

A recent post on IBM's Linux on Power Forum shosw how to use "dd" to clone a pLinux partition on a Virtual I/O Server. I've tried it with both AIX and Linux, and it takes about 10 minutes to clone a new server**. Although I recommend NIM for cloning, there have been times where this has come in handy. This is not supported by IBM, so use at your own risk. (** AIX 5.3 ML3, SUSE 9, VIO 1.2.1, p520 FW=IBM,SF235_160, LV size = 10GB)

http://oss.gonicus.de/openpower/index.php/Cloning_partition_on_IBM_VIO_server

Here's the steps I used for cloning AIX.

1. Prepare the AIX source partition
   • Turn off TCP/IP ("smit chinet" or rmtcpip)
   • Clear log files (errclear, rm /smit.*, etc)
   • Shutdown the partition
2. Create a profile for the clone partition on the HMC
3. Clone the partition on the VIO server
   • Read HMC profile changes
     cfgdev (padmin id)
   • Get the name and size of the source LV
     lsvg -lv vgname
   • Create clone LV with the same size as the source
     mklv -lv vdiskclone datavg 10G
   • Map the clone LV to the clone partition
     lsmap -all # locate the vhost name of the virtual SCSI on the clone partition
     mkvdev -vdev vdiskclone -vadapter vhost
   • Run the "dd" command from the root id on the VIO sever
     oem_setup_env
     ls -al /dev/* # locate lv name of source partition, assume it's vdisk
     time dd if=/dev/rvdisk of=/dev/rvdiskclone bs=8M
     Be sure to use the raw device starting with "r" /dev/rvdisk
4. Boot the clone partition
   • Configure TCP/IP, hostname
   • Reconfigure RSCT daemons (so DLPAR will work)
     /usr/sbin/rsct/install/bin/recfgct