Hello all, newbie here. I can't seem to find the information I want, anywhere, on this subject.

What I'd really like to do is be able to make an image file of my Linux drive (Debian Sarge) and store it on an offline drive for backup. I tried doing this with Norton Ghost 2003, but when I restored the image to a different drive to make sure the copy would boot, it didn't work. I re-installed GRUB (since Ghost doesn't support GRUB), and it starts to boot, but ends with the message "Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!"

I also tried using Ghost for Linux (g4l), with almost the same results. How do you all back up your boot drives? I'm getting very frustrated! If I ever want to clone my current drive to a larger one, it looks like I'm sunk! Being that the current one is 2.5gb, that's a tough place to be in.

A little help would be very appreciated.

You could just configure Linux software RAID and make your second drive a mirror (RAID 1). This has the benefit of being instantly bootable in the event the first drive has a hardware fault. The downside being if the problem is software (somebody deleted the wrong file for example) the problem would exist on the mirror as well. For most purposes however having a mirror then doing backup to tape works well enough for restoring missing files.

It may be possible to simply to configure the drive as a mirror and break the mirror so that it no longer is automatically updated. This is common in other things I've worked with but I've not done it in Linux.

You can copy a drive with "dd" but it won't do the boot sector. Doing a google for copying linux boot sector may point you to what you need.

Were /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab pointing to the correct partition(s)? If not, you get kernel panic.

I've been using Acronis True Image 8 for sometime now and it hasn't failed me yet. Constantly making images of Linux boxes and restoring them without a problem. Doesn't matter if they boot with lilo or grub, it just works.

Cheers.

They should be, as the only thing that changed was the size of the partitions.

Don't know if I'm ready to try RAID yet, but sometime I might want to.

Perhaps I should give Acronis a try.

Okay I checked fstab and "fdisk -l" to see if there is anything wrong. I can't tell on the fstab, but I noticed that fdisk reported the same number of blocks on a much larger drive. Is this the clue?

fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0



fdisk -l reports (note the difference in drive sizes and yet the exact same number of blocks. Is this supposed to happen? I really know nothing. lol):

Disk /dev/hda: 6007 MB, 6007357440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 730 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 696 5590588+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 697 730 273105 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 697 730 273073+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hdd: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 696 5590588+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd2 697 730 273105 5 Extended
/dev/hdd5 697 730 273073+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
CPX:/home/rodney/Desktop/temp/etc# Mutex destroy failure: Device or resource busy
ICE default IO error handler doing an exit(), pid = 4822, errno = 0

Thanks for the heads up on Acronis. I've reviewed it and am purchasing it.. Sounds spot on.

Also, I Really like your signature "... Viruses.. small and efficient."... LOL. good one.

Lanids.

Anybody knows a linux application for this kind of job? I personally would need a solution i could run it from a live cd/dvd... and eventually write the image of my entire linux installation to a dvd. And, preferably, after that be able to restore/write that image on different systems.

# i suppose one of the problems would be the fact that for booting grub needs the
# exact coordinates of the /boot and root partition, so if either one changes, the restore would be
# impossible or at least time consuming.

Is there anything like that on linux?

Thanks.

M.I.S.S.? I always thought it was K(eep).I.S.S.