The answer was yes it can be done. The first response of several is included
at the end, the other three are summarized.
Alan Rollow noted that the only difference to the disk driver was that CD
was read-only.
Yvon Lauriault uses vdump/restore from a CD to a disk with a large a
partition. Disklabel shows the distribution CDs with identical a and c
partitions which is pretty logical.
Andrew Busch used this technique regularly.
I did a test.
Using this technique, a 4.0b >> 4.0d upgrade on a 2100 5/250 took 24 minutes
for installing 85 subsets. That doesn't include subset configuration,
nor the kernel build. The total hard down time was less than an hour.
Layered product uninstall and reinstall and named and sendmail replacement
extended the time to two hours during which one or more system functions
were not available. The machine has 150gb Usenet spool file (700k
articles/day) and an Apache web server which gets 1m hits/day, but those
components were only down for the one hour "core system " upgrade.
For a site with several or many systems, building a custom install disk
with the operating system, patches, and layered products, then plugging it
in where needed can save a lot of time.
John Nebel
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 16:03:20 -0400
From: Tom Reu <tcr_at_unx.dec.com>
To: John Nebel <nebel_at_athena.csdco.com>
Subject: Re: Copying distribution CD to disk to speed up install
No problem at all. Zero the disklabel using disklabel -z on the
disk and then dd the cd to the disk, and you'll be set.
Regards,
Tom Reu
John Nebel wrote:
>
> Is there any problem with copying the distribution CD to a disk before
> doing an installupdate?
>
> I'd like to minimize the down time.
>
> John Nebel
--
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Tom Reu, M/S: UNX email: tcr_at_unx.dec.com
Tru64 UNIX Installation Team Voice: 732-577-6052
Compaq Computer Corporation FAX: 732-577-6003
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Received on Sat Jun 19 1999 - 23:48:29 NZST