AIX - Rootvg Backup - Contd....

AIX - Rootvg Backup - Contd....

First block has boot image.

The BOS boot image contains a copy of the system’s kernel and device drivers
needed to boot from the mksysb tape. It is created by the bosboot command.

Second block has following things, 1. /tapeblksize, 2. /image.data, 3. bosinst.data.

AIX - Rootvg Backup

AIX - Rootvg Backup

Using mksysb command we can take the rootvg (AIX OS) backup

#mksysb –i /dev/rmt0

#mksysb –ie /dev/rmt0 (exclude backup – please read NOTE message)

i option is used for crate the image.data file created in tape

This image.data file contains all the file system information’s in rootvg while restore the rootvg backup, before start the restore it will read the information’s from the image.data file

After the command execution rootvg backup created in tap, If OS got corrupted, that time we can restore the os from rootvg backup.

NOTE: While taking rootvg backup we can exclude unwanted file systems in backup process. If you not required following file systems in mksysb backup,
/var – log files
That time you should put entry in /etc/exclude.rootvg,


While creating the rootvg backup, first tape is spitted in to 4 blocks (block size is 512)