[Info-vax] The dangers of extended uptime. Was: Re: swap and page files

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:

(snip)
 
> A friend who is a *nix system administrator has the following problem:
 
> 2 Solaris boxes, one with an uptime of 3 years, the other with an uptime 
> of 6 years. These are configured together using Veritas Cluster Server 
> (VCS) such that for limited time periods one box should be able to cope 
> with the workload of both.

Solaris/SPARC or Solaris/x86?

> One of the mirrored system disks has failed on one of those boxes.
> New disk ordered [1], but when it arrived they couldn't get the old disk 
> out.
 
> Somewhere in this mix an extra file system was added to System A, but it 
> won't mount on System B (reason unknown).
 
> A project to replace these systems was initiated about 4 years ago, but 
> got dropped in favour of something else.
 
> My friend is now in the position of ensuring that the Unix team in 
> charge of these systems don't perform a reboot, in case either of them 
> or at worst case, both, don't come back.  

Favorite reason for SPARC systems not comming back is that the battery
in the TOY clock has failed. Ones I remember won't boot at all with it
down. For x86, I don't know.

> Oracle[2] have been called in 
> to have a look but they want to take the systems down to have a look at 
> them, and the customer is afraid that the boxes won't come up again.  A 
> quick look at Wiki suggests that the version of Solaris mentioned 
> dropped off support last March.

I have before made copies of the file systems of running machines
(I don't remember SunOS or Solaris), fsck them (it is a copy of a
running system, so obviously not shut down) and then booted.

That is one that I would try here. (Assuming a spare system to
get running.)

Used SPARC boxes are pretty cheap, used x86 even cheaper.

-- glen