Hi guys,

I have a redhat laptop and a sun solaris 8 server networked together

I created an nfs share on the sun server and backed up an image of the Redhat laptop to it.
The Hard disk size of the laptop is 40Gb but I have about 38Gb free space on the sun server. So I compressed the image while backing up.

# dd if=/dev/hda | gzip > /NFS_MOUNT/backup.gz

This created the file OK.

Now I'm testing a restore.

So I have donwloaded System Rescue CD and booted the laptop with that.
I've set up the ip address and default gateway and can ping the Sun server.

I've then mounted the NFS partition, and can see the backup file.

However when I try to restore with the command:

# gzip -dc /NFS_MOUNT/backup.gz | dd of=/dev/hda

I get an error: No space left on device.

Am I missing a step? I thought dd would just overwrite the disk.
Does this mean there is not enough space on the sun server or not enough space on the redhat laptop?

When booted with the system rescue cd the output of sfdisk -l has /dev/sdX where I was expecting /dev/hdX

Can anyone help?

Many thanks and kind regards,

Stin.

I think you diagnosed your own problem. Your rescue disk uses /dev/sdX instead of /dev/hdX; therefore there is "no room on the (/dev/hdX) device" which isn't there. My understanding is that PATA disks used to go by /dev/hdX with SCSI and SATA as /dev/sdX, but that most distros now have all hds as /dev/sdX.

Bottom line, I'd recommend trying to restore using the appropriate disk now called /dev/sdX. Better still, make sure the rescue disk is compatible with the underlying distro or do both backup and restore with the same rescue CD.

Good luck