Disaster Recovery for ARM Appliances

Versions 2.4, 2.5, & 3.0

Applies to Platform: All Endian ARM appliances: UTM Mini 2.4 - 2.5 - 3.0, UTM Mini Edge 2.5 - 3.0, UTM Mini Edge Wireless 2.5 - 3.0, UTM Mini Wireless 2.5 - 3.0, 4i Edge 200 2.5 - 3.0
Updated on: 06th of May 2014

This lesson illustrates how to create the USB recovery stick for your Endian UTM Mini ARM Appliance.

Disaster Recovery Key

Disaster Recovery Key is an easy to use and reliable solution for the automatic on the fly recovery of a broken system. Using Disaster Recovery Key you can restore your system to the point of the most recent backup.
Disaster Recovery Key always installs a specific version of the software and restores a backup if available, it can be used in case of a faulty system or if a system becomes unrecoverable after an upgrade.

Requirements

• Disaster Recovery Image (ZIP file, see next section).
• Endian Appliance target machine (fully up-to-date).
• USB stick drive.

Download the Disaster Recovery Image and create the Disaster Recovery USB stick drive

Get a clean USB stick, then log in to the Endian Network, go to the recovery keys download page and choose the appropriate image for your device.

Unzip the content of the recovery stick package and put the three files onto the USB key. You should find the following three files:

• recovery.uInitrd
• recovery.uImage
• recovery.ubi

Plug the USB stick into the Endian Appliance and create an USB backup by going to the Appliance GUI from System > Backup > Create new backup and tick on Create backup on USB Stick. Select at least Current configuration backup type.

Start the System Recovery Using your Recovery Key - Newer appliances

This procedure works on the vast majority of Endian ARM Appliances whose hardware is newer than December 2012.

• Connect to Endian ARM Appliance through serial console (here an easy guide to connect via serial console) and make sure the disaster recovery key is plugged into the device.
• Reboot the device and press any key as soon as you see: Hit any key to stop autoboot.
• At the prompt, write

  Marvell >> run recovery

  then press Enter.
• Now you see the disaster recovery installer running.
• Wait until the screen says !!!!!!!!!!!!! FINISHED SUCCESSFULLY !!!!!!!!!!!!! and don't worry if some errors appears.

Troubleshooting

• If the procedure described in this section ends immediately with the following error, please follow the procedure described in the next section, Start the System Recovery Using your Recovery Key - Older appliances.
  

  Marvell >> run recovery
  ## Error: "recovery" not defined

• If the procedure does not start or if you experience some error that stops the procedure at some point or that does not produce a recovered and working system, you should try to use another USB key for the recovery procedure.

Start the System Recovery Using your Recovery Key - Older Appliances

This procedure applies in all cases when the run recovery command fails.

• Connect to Endian ARM Appliance through serial console (here an easy guide to connect via serial console) and make sure the disaster recovery key is plugged into the device.
• Reboot the device and press any key as soon as you see: Hit any key to stop autoboot.
• If you have formatted the USB stick with the FAT32 filesystem, type in the following code, pressing the Enter key only once after each line:
  

  setenv kernelrecovery 'rw initrd=0x8000000 root=/dev/ram0 panic=10 recovery' 
  setenv bootrecovery 'setenv kernelargs ${kernelrecovery}; run setbootargs; bootm 0x2000000 0x8000000' 
  usb reset 
  fatload usb 0:1 0x8000000 /recovery.uInitrd 
  fatload usb 0:1 0x2000000 /recovery.uImage 
  run bootrecovery

• If you have formatted the USB stick with the EXT2 filesystem, type in the following code, pressing the Enter key only once after each line:
  

  setenv kernelrecovery 'rw initrd=0x8000000 root=/dev/ram0 panic=10 recovery' 
  setenv bootrecovery 'setenv kernelargs ${kernelrecovery}; run setbootargs; bootm 0x2000000 0x8000000' 
  usb reset 
  ext2load usb 0:1 0x8000000 /recovery.uInitrd 
  ext2load usb 0:1 0x2000000 /recovery.uImage 
  run bootrecovery

• Now you see the disaster recovery installer running
• Wait until the screen says !!!!!!!!!!!!! FINISHED SUCCESSFULLY !!!!!!!!!!!!! and don't worry if some errors appears.
• Type in reboot or quit twice using Ctrl-D

The device is now recovered and the most recent backup is restored from disaster recovery stick. If the device is not functional yet, reboot a second time.