Backup RHEL 2

[khalidaaa]

Hi RHELers,

Simple question from a RHEL newbie, how to backup and restore (in case needed) an RHEL box? How can i create a bootable tape?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[geebers]

Could you instead use a bootable CD/DVD??

Your Red Hat Repositories *should* have a package for you to install called mklivecd. It creates a bootable liveCD or DVD of your currently installed Red Hat system.

If it does, install it. Quite easy to use.

Hope this helps.

 

[BadBigBen]

Take a look at:

Partimage

Description: Partimage is a Linux utility which saves partitions having a supported filesystem to an image file.

it may already be installed, or install it...

More Info:

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[khalidaaa]

The problem is that we don't have DVD writer on the workstations!

I couldn't find the mklivecd in the installation DVD (talking about RHEL5.2)! The OS that is currently installed on the workstations is RHEL 4 update 3 (to be upgraded to 5.2 this weekend).

I couldn't find how to download the partimage?!?!

Is there a way that i can create an image over the network and then just boot from it to restore?

Thanks

Regards,
Khalid

 

[BadBigBen]

On the right side there is the DOWNLOAD button... which leads to:

http://www.partimage.org/Download

there you will find the TAR BALL to install it...

This might also be helpful:

Partimage-manual Network-support

http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Network-support

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[khalidaaa]

For some reason while configuring the partimage i'm getting the following error:

configure: error: *** gzip library (libz) not found

I just feel that installing partimage is a bit complicated! Is there any other tool that is a bit less complex?

Thanks

Regards,
Khalid

 

[khalidaaa]

Ok. The above was due the missing openssl which i've already installed.

Proceeding with the configuration ...

Regards,
Khalid

 

[khalidaaa]

I ran into another problem with partimage

When i run the partimage, it displays my disks with unknown for disks with LVM!!!!

How to overcome this?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[BadBigBen]

You did not mention that you had LVM partitions!!! Probably by manual mounting the LVM to another DEV, e.g. /vg00/home to /dev/LV1...

better solution would be the following:

An LVM snapshot is an exact copy of an LVM partition that has all the data from the LVM volume from the time the snapshot was created.

...

I will also show how to restore an LVM partition from a backup in an extra chapter at the end of this tutorial.

Back Up (And Restore) LVM Partitions With LVM Snapshots

http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm_snapshots

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[khalidaaa]

Thanks BadBigBen for the effort you put in helping me.

My situation is a bit different. I'm having the RHEL 4 on normal ext3fs but i'm thinking to use LVM when installing the 5.2! So i need to restore the normal ext3 to LVM fs!!

How can i do this?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[BadBigBen]

Khalid now it is clear...

Maybe this will help:

LVM Single Drive to LVM RAID 1 Mirror Migration

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/340

Point-and-Click Linux LVM Filesystem Workstation Backup, Part 1

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6389/1/

Besides that, I would say don't use LVM at all, but rather look into Hardware Raid instead, benefits are that the OS sees the RAID as a single drive and then you can use DD (or DDRESCUE) to clone from the OLD drive to the RAID volume or the aforementioned Partimage, another benefit is Data safety (depending on RAID LVL used of course)...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[khalidaaa]

The reason why i don't want to use RAID is that this is a workstation and the data in there doesn't often change! So i thought LVM will add the benefit of extending the space to newly added disks in the future!

I will try your suggested links and will come back to you.

Regards,
Khalid

 

[khalidaaa]

hi badbigben,

Sorry for the delay in coming back to this as i'm still trying with partimage. I'm doing a normal backup to ext3fs but i'm not being able to do so! i'm trying to backup root (/dev/hda2) file system to a local file system (/image/redhat4u4.gz). Although /images file system has more than 100GB free size but it complains about the space when it reaches 19% of the backup process!

Any idea why?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[Annihilannic]

File size limit perhaps? Is the output file 2GB when this happens?

Annihilannic.

 

[exsnafu]

just out of curiousity Khalid, have you looked into CloneZilla at all?

http://clonezilla.org/

it has lvm support and works pretty well from what i've heard.. been meaning to try it out myself.. only problem i see is that you can't clone/backup a live system but i havent investigated enough yet.

 

[khalidaaa]

Annihilannic,

I don't know where to find the output file! Do you have any idea?

hi exsnafu, nice to have you in the linux forum as well

No I haven't. I will try it once i go back to work tomorrow.

Thanks guys for the addition.

Regards,
Khalid

 

[Annihilannic]

The file you mentioned: /image/redhat4u4.gz.

Annihilannic.

 

[khalidaaa]

Thanks Annihilannic. I don't know the file size because i'm running the above while booting using a rescue disk and the partimage window doesn't give any indication to the size of the output file. Now if what you are saying is right, then how can i copy files bigger than 2GB?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[Annihilannic]

Can you not see the /image filesystem when you are booted up normally? I wouldn't waste too much time trying to fix it until you confirm that that is the problem. Anyway, it was only a wild guess, I have never used partimage...

Annihilannic.

 

[BadBigBen]

partimage should have a setting that splits the backup to 2GB...

alternatively you could use TAR to back up the files (it does not back up partition info)....

How to use TAR for backup

http://rahulxarora.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-use-tar-for-backup-oraclehome.html

How to use tar to do increamental backup

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.misc/2003-12/0007.html

Howto: Backup and restore your system!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

Backing up Files with Tar (this is the BSD version but it is similar in Linux)

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2002/05/23/FreeBSD_Basics.html

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"