Hi!

I need to be able to recover my OS from a backup. I meen I need to recover my complete hard drive from backup.
My system has two disks: hda and hdb. I have installed SLES 8 on disk a, and create four partitions:

sda1: /boot 100MB
sda2: / 4GB
sda3: /swap 2GB
sda4: /opt

Later I have created three backup files:

bck_boot.tar.gz - all files from /boot directory
bck_root.tar.gz - directories from root partition except /boot, /opt /proc
and /temp
bck_opt.tar.gz - all files from /opt directory

My recovery procedure is:

1) replace demaged hard drive with new formated hard drive
2) start Knoppix
3) create same partitions as I had on demaged hard drive
4) get back backup files from backup server to new hard drive with ssh
5) unzip file bck_boot.tar.gz to new partition sda1 (on this partition I place all files from boot directory)
6) file bck_root.tar.gz to new partition sda2
7) unzip file bck_opt.tar.gz to new partition sda4
8) create boot and opt directories on root partition (/boot and /opt)

All this eems OK to me, but then when I shutdown Knoppix and remove CD I restart my computer and get in problems.

All I get after restart is black screen with word GRUB in up left corner.

How can I solve this?

Also, other ideas for backup are welcome.

"All I get after restart is black screen with word GRUB in up left corner."

In looking through your recovery procedure I do not think that you are restoring the MBR. The MBR seems to be whatever happens to be on your replacement drive when you insert it in the machine. You might try chroot from Knoppix to your restored system and then run grub-install to recreate the MBR.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

I have tried to reinstall GRUB with tise commands:

root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

Now I don't see GRUB, just black screen.

Here is my original menu.lst file:

gfxmenu (hd0,0)/message
color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 vga=791
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd
title floppy
root (fd0)
chainloader +1
title failsafe
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz.shipped root=/dev/sda2 ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal nosmp disableapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd.shipped

Same values I have on new disk, but still dosn't work.
Why?

I have solved allmost all problems that I had. I have used PartImage to create images of all partitions on hard drive (boot, root and opt) and with PartImage I can restore all thise partitions. All this work OK.

But I need to install an agent of my backup software, so that I can retrieve files with images from backup server to my local hard disk. I need to install this agent under Knoppix.

But there is a problem. I think that because ramdisk is read-only I get this error:

dpkg: unable to access dpkg status area: Read-only file system

I think that during installation some data need to be writen to var directory in ramdisk. But that is read-only area.

So can anybody help me with this?

Its not really clear what you mean by agent or what you are trying to achieve here. Could you explain in more detail what you are trying to do.

I meen agent as agent of BrightStor ARCServe Backup software.

While server was OK I created backups with Knoppix and Partition Image and with this software transferred them to the tape atached to my backup server. In case I lose hard drive I need to restore partitions on new hard drive. I can do restore with Knoppix and Partition Image, but I need to transffer backup file from a tape to the new hard drive.

For now I install minimum SUSE configuration and then install agent. After that I start SUSE, transffer backup file to the new hard drive and use Knoppix and Partition Image to restore hard drive.

This works OK but it would be much faster if I could install this agent under Knoppix (I would save time needed to install minimum SUSE configuration).

Is this possible?

Personally I would investigate using rsync to backup stuff under cron. Rsync will create a full copy and thereafter updates changed files only. If you want more detail I can give you links and personal experiences as I have this operating on /home on an hourly basis. It will even backup across a network.

i would definetally like to know about rsync, any info would be great

Here is an excellent article -


rsync snapshots

The following is the script I made along with the dialog;

#!/bin/bash
#mount /dev/hda6 on /mnt
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda6 /mnt
#backup files to hda6 and write a log file.
rsync --delete-after -avH /home/ /mnt/backup/home > /var/log/backup.log
#umount hda6
umount /dev/hda6

To make it executable do chmod 700 ./backup

to run it do ./backup

I put it in /etc/cron.hourly

The following entry was put in /etc/crontab so that a backup is made 10 min past each hour.

# m h dom mon dow user command
10 * * * * root /etc/cron.hourly/backup

Reading the documentation on rsync will also prove useful.