System Recovery

mhm · 06-14-2007, 09:24 AM

Hi all,
Am not sure if this list is the right one to ask my question, I apologize if not.

Is there any way in Linux to make a full backup for the hole OS (files and system image) so in case the system crashed I can boot from it, like make_tape_recovery in HP-UX???

Regards
Mhm

hacker supreme · 06-14-2007, 10:03 AM

I don't know if this is what you're thinking of but, you can make an image of the entire of the disc/partition you boot from/have your documents stored on using dd.

Tutorial here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=362506

* realizes it's been three months since I last backed up anything, goes to backup.*

mhm · 06-16-2007, 03:20 AM

Hi,
Thanx alot about your help...
Iread your post and its really interesting things about dd command, but what i meant is a way of creating an image on tape to use if the system crash to boot from and to get the system back to its normal state. Is there any thing like that in linux environment???

Regards
MHM

bigjohn · 06-16-2007, 03:31 AM

well it's also fair to remember that the dd command is, well can be, quite complicated.

During my recent hard drive failure, I found that even though I thought I'd got it right (the dd command I issued, that is), to mirror one hard drive to another, the new device wouldn't boot as the dd I'd used hadn't copied all of the boot stuff - when I managed to get the original hdd to boot, I could access all the stuff on the new drive, and it was as far as I could tell, the same, but something was missing from the boot process.

In the end, I just swapped back over to the new hdd, and then did a re-install, but told the installer not to touch the /home partition. This worked fine so I left it at that.

It might be as good a suggestion for you to check out the abilities of the tar command mhm, so that you can make the backups that way as well. It might mean that you had to make backups of the system and data seperately but then again, as long as the most often changed data is kept up to date surely the aim is no too loose anything, or at least as little as possible.

I don't know about you mhm, but I feel that it's my personal data that I value the most as it's what takes the longest to replace if everything "goes to a sack of sh1t".

S'up to you my friend.

regards

John

mhm · 06-18-2007, 08:08 AM

Hi Bigjohn,
how r u friend?

Thanx for your help man, good way to work around and do the backup...

Regards
Mhm

DotHQ · 06-18-2007, 08:17 AM

I have also looked for a utility like AIX's 'makesysb' which dumps the OS to a tape and makes it bootable. This makes it very easy to gen a new system with the same hardware or rebuild a server which has failed for one reason or another.
I have not found a utility that works similar in Linux (for Red Hat in particular).

Berhanie · 06-18-2007, 09:31 PM

You could also switch all your filesystems, including /, to RAID-1. Then you'd always have an up-to-date bootable backup.

mhm · 06-19-2007, 01:36 AM

Hi Berhanie,

Most of the systems I'd work with is raid 1, how can I do the bootable backup????

Regards
Mhm

Berhanie · 06-19-2007, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Most of the systems I'd work with is raid 1, how can I do the bootable backup????

You write the boot loader to the MBR of the raid device, which can be done with lilo using the following lilo.conf:

Code:

boot = /dev/md0
raid-extra-boot = mbr-only
image = /boot/vmlinuz
  root = /dev/md0
  label = Linux
  read-only # Non-UMSDOS filesystems should be mounted read-only for checking

Also, make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the second drive of the RAID1 pair, in case the first one fails.

I'm assuming we're talking about software raid, by the way.