Hello everyone,

I finally got the NDIS Wrapper working on my system, I still have to log in the shell everytime I start my system, by doing: su -c 'bash -l', and then doing modprobe ndiswrapper and setting up the rest of the ifconfig and wconfig values for my network. Once I do this it works so I don't want to lose my work and was wondering if there was a systemrestore like utility for Linux? I plan to set up my system in a LAMP configuration and wanted to be able to save my system before I ventured any further. I been using linux for just 2 weeks so any detailed help will be most appreciated.

PS: I'm running the x86 32bit version of Fedora Core 5
Also for those who are still having trouble installing the kernel sources as I was, try: su -c 'yum install kernel-devel', su -c 'yumdownloader --source kernel' from the release notes just wont work, and installing the sources through RPM requires skills well beyond those of a newbie like me.

You can add the commands you do to /etc/rc.local and they will run at each startup.
There are many backup tools some with guis and many as command lines. Goto http://www.google.com/linux and search for backup tools or software. Many use the tar command to backup with.

Brian1

I use http://www.mondorescue.org/ as a replacement for Norton Ghost. To install under FC5 you'll need to FTP download:
afio-2.5-0.fc4.i386.rpm
buffer-1.19-0.fc4.i386.rpm
mindi-1.0.7-495.fc5.i386.rpm
mondo-2.0.7-495.fc5.i386.rpm
and install them with rpm -Uvh

Afterwards you can start the prog with:
/usr/sbin/mondoarchive
or begin a partial/file restore with:
/usr/sbin/mondorestore

In addition to (optionally) making boot floppies, the backup process creates mondorescue.iso in:
/root/images/mindi
which should be burned to CD and booted to restore entire partitions.

Anyway, only other thing off top of my head to remember is if using a dvd burner when promped enter /dev/dvd and you should be off to the races. Of course, it's not really for daily backups... better used to save a "snapshot" of the systems' current state. Sure does save a lot of time if you have to reinstall though.

mondorescue and I believe mindirescue are great simply tools.

Thanks for a reminder there Crito
Brian1

Many thanks for your fast response, Brian and Crito, I will give mondorescue a try. Also thanks Brian for your help with the locations to store my commands so they are run on startup. Best regards,

Brian, I tried storing my scripts in the /etc/rc.local file as follows:

#!/bin/sh
#
# This script will be executed *after* all the other init scripts.
# You can put your own initialization stuff in here if you don't
# want to do the full Sys V style init stuff.
#bash -l
#depmod -a
#modprobe ndiswrapper
#ifconfig eth0 down
#ifconfig wlan0 up
#iwconfig wlan0 key 0353003530
#iwconfig wlan0 essid MMDR-HOME
#dhclient wlan0
touch /var/lock/subsys/local

and tried restarting my system but the ndiswrapper shell still did not log, could you please point what I may be doing wrong? (I tried the same on my terminal just going as root and it all works)

I believe you should remove the '#' entry from your commands. Its used just to 'comment' things (like providing some info..).

Thanks Shrikant.odugoudar and please pardon my ignorance of the comment symbol. I did remove the # from each of my commands but now upon startup I keep getting this blue screen right after my wireless card lights up, I'm asumming I needed to add my commands to the end of the file, right after: touch /var/lock/subsys/local, I will re-install FC5 install the NDIS Wrapper again and do the back up with Mondorescue before I try this again.

Might need to add a pause after each of the commands before the next command runs. You can use one of the following lines between each command.
sleep 3
or
ping -c3 127.0.0.1 > /dev/null

Example:
modprobe ndiswrapper
ping -c3 127.0.0.1 > /dev/null
ifconfig eth0 down
ping -c3 127.0.0.1 > /dev/null
ifconfig wlan0 up
ping -c3 127.0.0.1 > /dev/null

Also I do not think you need to do the bash line and not sure if you need to do depmod -a each time. You only need to run depmod -a once after the install. Once it is run it generates a new module device map for that kernel that is in your /boot directory. The bash might be the issue and the timing to execute each command. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to registry a new ethernet device so pause helps.

Brian1

Brian1

I followed your advice and everything works now. Thanks for all your help.

Thought I'd share a picture (not screenshot, hehe) of something I hope you never have to see.
http://4crito.com/screenshots/mondo.jpg

Worked perfectly though. Burned the mindi boot iso in root's home dir to a mini 185MB CD-R and performed a "hot" backup straight to a blank 4.7GB DVD+RW using maximum compression. So, after hosing up my 'puter good, just popped in mini CD-R, rebooted, reformatted partitions and restored from DVD+RW. Done in under 30 minutes and I'm back to a fully updated and tweaked system state too. Handled all the weird LVM (logical volume management) partition stuff and everything.

Needless to say I'm a happy mondo rescue user.