AIX Install Disk Image Format

> on a related note... does anyone know what format the disk images are in? tried mounting one on my linux box using a loop back device and ufs,jfs and vfat - but no luck!

Douglas Hall diddled about and came up with:
   After a bit of experimenting witht the various formats (dd, tar, cpio etc,) it finally turns out the format of the floppies is the aix backup format.

# man -k backup
should reveal some information on the various commands for manipulating backup images and

# /etc/restore -T
on one of the OS floppies (try the first on in a series) should list the contents of the archive.

Gereon Wenzel chimes in with:
   "restore -T" does a great job listing the contents of an AIX install disk, before you dump any useless scrap to your disk.

Back to Douglas Hall:
"installp" seems to be quite happy working with an image of the disk, so you could use "dd" to extract the contents of a floppy to harddisk and install that way, e.g.:

<output copied from the 9595>
# dd if=/dev/rfd0 of=/tmp/devtoolsimage1 bs=128k
# installp -d /tmp/devtoolsimage1

000-123 Warning: Before you continue, etc.,
<snippage>
Do you want to continue with this command? (y or n)
y
Please mount volume 1 on /tmp/devtoolsimage1
...and press Enter to continue
     files restored: 1
 -

The program " Adv. Dev. Support Tools(PS2)"
will be installed.

Do you want to do this? (y/n)
<end of output copied from the 9595>

There is also an "installt" (install from tape) command which I suppose could be used to create a tape of all the various distributions quite easily. Not having a tape drive, I cannot test this :)

Install over the network is the next challenge!

Content created and/or collected by:
Louis F. Ohland, Peter H. Wendt, David L. Beem, William R. Walsh, Tatsuo Sunagawa, Tomáš Slavotínek, Jim Shorney, Tim N. Clarke, Kevin Bowling, and many others.

Ardent Tool of Capitalism is maintained by Tomáš Slavotínek.
Last update: 09 Dec 2024 - Changelog | About | Legal & Contact