IBM RS/6000 - Manual (Page 110)

smit lsmksysb
This will list all the files on your mksysb tape and in doing so, will verify the
contents of the tape.
Note
The only way to test if a mksysb will boot correctly is by booting from that tape.
5.4.4 Restoring Your System Backup
You can restore your mksysb by booting from the tape which you have created and
following the instructions which are displayed. To boot from the tape, you have to
press F4 (or 4 on an ASCII terminal) during the firmware boot, and select the tape
device to boot from. Alternatively, you can place the tape drive as the first device
in the customized Boot List so that the tape will automatically boot when the
machine is powered on or rebooted.
We tested booting from and restoring a mksysb from a 4mm (FC #6142) internal
tape drive and from an 8mm 7208-001 external tape drive. Both of these worked
on the E20 and F30 without problems.
When installing the backup image, the system will check whether the target system
has enough disk space to create all the logical volumes stored on the backup. If
there is enough space, the entire backup is restored. Otherwise, the installation
halts, and the system will prompt you to chose more destination hard disks, if
available.
File systems created on the target system will be the same size as they were on
the source system unless the
SHRINK variable was set to yes in the image.data file
before the backup image was created. An exception is the /tmp directory, which
can be increased to allocate enough space for the
bosboot command. When the
installation of the backup has finished, the installation program reconfigures the
Object Data Manager (ODM) on the target system. If the target system does not
have exactly the same hardware configuration as the source system, the program
may modify device attributes in the following target system files:
All files in the /etc/objrepos file beginning with "Cu"
All files in the /dev directory.
Network Addresses
If you restore your mksysb onto another system which is on the same network
as the first, then this may result in duplicate addresses which can disrupt
network communications.
Although the mksysb command will create a bootable tape on the PCI-based
RS/6000 servers, the tapes will not boot on microchannel-based uniprocessor or
microchannel-based symmetric multiprocessor machines. Additionally,
mksysb
tapes created on microchannel-based uniprocessor and microchannel-based
symmetric multiprocessor machines will not boot on PCI-based machines.
86 Introduction to PCI-Based RS/6000 Servers