Nekochan Net

Hi,

I'm trying to restore (in Linux) a full system backup I did on an IRIX machine (an O2) years ago. The backup was done with the GUI backup tool, choosing cpio, and it's a full system backup.

I tried with cpio -idv < mybackup.cpio on Linux, but it stops restoring after some files. Then, after some minutes, a "premature end of file error" is reported (but a number of files are restored before stopping).

I also did a cpio -itv < mybackup.cpio, and it successfully lists an small fraction of the file names in the backup, but then it displays garbage chars, and, after some minutes, ends with "unknown error".

Is there some cpio flag combination which will do the trick?

Or is there any alternative Linux tool which would restore IRIX cpio files?

Thanks!!

Maybe your original backup is corrupt

_________________
-ks



See them all >here<

Blind stab in the dark here but..

Does --swap-bytes help ...?

Linux is little endian and IRIX big endian.
I haven't used cpio for a looong time.
You can't test it on another SGI box..?

R.

_________________
死の神はりんごだけ食べる

アレゲはアレゲ以上のなにものでもなさげ -- アレゲ研究家


J5600, 2 x Mac, 3 x SUN, Alpha DS20E, Alpha 800 5/550, 3 x RS/6000, Amiga 4000 VideoToaster, Amiga4000 -030, 733MHz Sam440 AmigaOS 4.1 update 1. Tandem Himalaya S-Series Nonstop S72000 ServerNet.

Sold:

Cortex ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cortex-th ... 11?sk=info
Minnie ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minnie-th ... 02?sk=info
Book ----> http://pymblesoftware.com/book/
Github ---> https://github.com/pymblesoftware
Visit http://www.pymblesoftware.com
Search for "Pymble", "InstaElf", "CryWhy" or "Cricket Score Sheet" in the iPad App store or search for "Pymble" or "CryWhy" in the iPhone App store.

Linux is neutral, my powerpc linux is most definitately big-endian.

_________________
4xRS6K 2xHP9K 6xSUN 1xDEC 14xMAC 7xPC 2xPS2

OK, x86-Linux is little endian... which is 99.995% of Linux out there.. Better now?
I thought I was being a little more helpful than maybe your archive is corrupt.

I should wipe Linux-powerpc off my 9114-275 and install AIX on it.

R.

_________________
死の神はりんごだけ食べる

アレゲはアレゲ以上のなにものでもなさげ -- アレゲ研究家


J5600, 2 x Mac, 3 x SUN, Alpha DS20E, Alpha 800 5/550, 3 x RS/6000, Amiga 4000 VideoToaster, Amiga4000 -030, 733MHz Sam440 AmigaOS 4.1 update 1. Tandem Himalaya S-Series Nonstop S72000 ServerNet.

Sold:

Cortex ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cortex-th ... 11?sk=info
Minnie ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minnie-th ... 02?sk=info
Book ----> http://pymblesoftware.com/book/
Github ---> https://github.com/pymblesoftware
Visit http://www.pymblesoftware.com
Search for "Pymble", "InstaElf", "CryWhy" or "Cricket Score Sheet" in the iPad App store or search for "Pymble" or "CryWhy" in the iPhone App store.

With a stab in the dark? I offered an opinion which may very well be valid but not being an "expert", I guess I could be wrong.

_________________
-ks



See them all >here<

Without physically being there or any evidence at all anything is merely a guess. even a stab in the dark based on a hypothesis right or wrong.. Any archive could be corrupt at any time, thats a given. Should I be rising to this...


R.

_________________
死の神はりんごだけ食べる

アレゲはアレゲ以上のなにものでもなさげ -- アレゲ研究家


J5600, 2 x Mac, 3 x SUN, Alpha DS20E, Alpha 800 5/550, 3 x RS/6000, Amiga 4000 VideoToaster, Amiga4000 -030, 733MHz Sam440 AmigaOS 4.1 update 1. Tandem Himalaya S-Series Nonstop S72000 ServerNet.

Sold:

Cortex ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cortex-th ... 11?sk=info
Minnie ---> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minnie-th ... 02?sk=info
Book ----> http://pymblesoftware.com/book/
Github ---> https://github.com/pymblesoftware
Visit http://www.pymblesoftware.com
Search for "Pymble", "InstaElf", "CryWhy" or "Cricket Score Sheet" in the iPad App store or search for "Pymble" or "CryWhy" in the iPhone App store.

Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, the original poster might see if the version of cpio that he is using supports file skipping. For example, the IRIX version of cpio has a command line switch, -k, which forces cpio to read past bad file headers and tape errors. I think the GNU version of cpio does that (without a command line switch) by default, but I might be wrong.

Am I correct that you made the backup on a tape? Before you put too much wear and tear on a tape that may be in the process of failing, consider using the dd command to dump the tape contents to disk. You might also want to try restoring from the dd image.

Other things to consider: trying to restore using the same tape drive that was used to create the backup (again, assuming tape was used); trying to restore using an IRIX version of cpio, or at least a SysV version of cpio.

Well, tried to get to the O2 machine, but... bad news, it no longer boots... amber light, the hard disk seems to not even try to spin, and, the only way of powering off is to unplug the machine -the power button doesn't help even if I press it for a long time- (and... if I plug the power cord again, it switches on without pressing the power button!!). No idea about what's happening, because this O2 used to work, and nobody opened it nor moved it, nor nothing.

Anyway, my main worry in this moment is being able to restore that backup. Regarding your questions, no, the backup wasn't done on tape, but on a disk file (IIRC it was done in another machine via LAN, but I don't remember it now). Anyway, it was done with the GUI backup tool.

I tried the --swap-bytes option with no success.

If it's of any help, the file weights 8GB.

I also tried with "bsdcpio" (from an Ubuntu distribution) and results are the same.

I've an Indigo2 with IRIX6.2, but there's no way to upload an 8GB file to it, since it has just just 6GB of filesystem space, and most of it full (just 2GB free).

I´m running into the exec same problem with some full system backups I did over my network using the default irix backup program on 6.5.22.

I haven´t put much thought into it but so far I´ve tried with a powerbook running tiger and a x86 box running vista with GNU cpio. Both with the same results as cesss.

7zip also has support for cpio but won´t touch those irix backups.

_________________
Extreme R4400 200MHz (1MB L2) 160MB

There is a thread (maybe a couple of them) that talk about O2s that have that problem. Usually pretty easily worked around. Might be worth a search. I have to go offline for a few days, so I won't be much more help, but you also may want to unplug the unit, unlatch and then reseat the main modules on the back of the machine, and try again.

One (hopefully) quick question: Is there some way (without installing samba) of running cpio in my IRIX 6.2 Indigo2 so that it takes the file on my linux box as input and it also dumps the output in the linux box? The only connection between the two machines is a painfully simple LAN.

NFS.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

(single-CM)

Being a total newbie with NFS, the best I got is running the IRIX 6.2 nfs client in NFSv2 mode (I don't know why the NFSv3 mode fails, but I was unable to get it working). And, moreover, I get "permission denied" errors if I try to write in the shared directory even if it's mounted in read/write. Anyway, I guess NFSv2 is useless, given that the backup file is about 8GB in size.

I followed these instructions (the linux box runs ubuntu 10.10):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNFSHowTo

Back to the IRIX cpio compatibility issue, I found this bit in the IRIX manpage:

NFS for IRIX 6.5 has always been NFSv3. I think 5.3 might have been NFSv2, but later on there was a NFSv3 released for 5.3 as well. At any rate the NFS CD in IRIX 6.5 includes tardists for 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5.

NFS did used to be a separate item, but similar to the IDO it wasn't locked with a license manager.

NFS v2 vs v3 won't be a big deal for a home network. v2 uses UDP rather than TCP, so for larger networks it isn't very efficient. V4 puts in even more improvements for larger and distributed networks, and it increases security, but it's just not there for IRIX.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

(single-CM)