[gentoo-user] Re: Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[gentoo-user] Re: Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[davecode]

"What supports what" is a good reason for non-filesystem backups.  For
example partimage has trouble with XFS (still...after all these
years...).  A program like dd doesn't care the fs.  Call it a device
backup if you like.  This is your basic choice in backup - device or fs.
 Me personally, dd_rescue - far better than raw dd.

Your backup strategy has implications for partitioning Linux.  I make
backup partitions with the same byte count.  But that's over the top for
most.  They don't need to match exactly for dev bkups.  And of course
you don't go dev-to-dev all the time, sometimes dev-to-file and
file-to-dev.  Don't forget the MBR which dd can backup:  dd if=/dev/hdX
bs=512 count=1 of=MBR.dd

Who knows what Linux formats Ghost may or may not support.  It's passe
even for Windows.  They use DOS drivers for everything.  That's right
16-bit DOS.  I am amazed Norton can make money selling stuff like that. 
Norton may have hosed your fs.

For repairs and backup it's better to boot something like www.grml.org
live CD with lots of good admin tools and fs support.  You can run ext3
repairs from that.  Man e2fsck or whatnot.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Crayon Shin Chan]

On Sunday 02 March 2008, davecode@nospammail.net wrote:
> "What supports what" is a good reason for non-filesystem backups.  For
> example partimage has trouble with XFS (still...after all these
> years...).  A program like dd doesn't care the fs.  Call it a device
> backup if you like.  This is your basic choice in backup - device or
> fs. Me personally, dd_rescue - far better than raw dd.

The advantage of something like partimage, which knows about the 
filesystem being backed up, is that it can back up only the used portions 
of the fs. So eg if you're backing up a 20GB partition of which only 1GB 
is in use, then using partimage it will be very quick and the resulting 
image very small.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Michael Schmarck]

Crayon Shin Chan <crayon.shin.chan.uk@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sunday 02 March 2008, davecode@nospammail.net wrote:
>> "What supports what" is a good reason for non-filesystem backups.  For
>> example partimage has trouble with XFS (still...after all these
>> years...).  A program like dd doesn't care the fs.  Call it a device
>> backup if you like.  This is your basic choice in backup - device or
>> fs. Me personally, dd_rescue - far better than raw dd.
> 
> The advantage of something like partimage, which knows about the
> filesystem being backed up, is that it can back up only the used portions
> of the fs.

Yes, it can. But you achieve the same (only used stuff is backed up)
with a simpler tool like "tar" as well.

> So eg if you're backing up a 20GB partition of which only 1GB 
> is in use, then using partimage it will be very quick and the resulting
> image very small.

Then the tar file will also be just 1GB.

I really don't see the benefit in using things like partimage or
Ghost.

Michael

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[cypherstrong]

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Another way to do (I do it actually)

Is to get a drive with ext3 partition for example
Create a directory for your backup

and use Rsync to copy any file with differential feature.

First time could take a long time, next time are very fast.

To backup everythink on the system, I run the single use mode,
It kill all the application runned ... so after, I mount bind root fs and over 
sub fs in tmp dir, mount my backup dir in another tmp dir
and run mirror with rsync

Fast, excellent, could easyly be migrate on another kind of server, or could 
restore only some filesystem.

It's good !

Good luck

Le Wednesday 05 March 2008 12:55:41 Michael Schmarck, vous avez écrit :
> Crayon Shin Chan <crayon.shin.chan.uk@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday 02 March 2008, davecode@nospammail.net wrote:
> >> "What supports what" is a good reason for non-filesystem backups.  For
> >> example partimage has trouble with XFS (still...after all these
> >> years...).  A program like dd doesn't care the fs.  Call it a device
> >> backup if you like.  This is your basic choice in backup - device or
> >> fs. Me personally, dd_rescue - far better than raw dd.
> >
> > The advantage of something like partimage, which knows about the
> > filesystem being backed up, is that it can back up only the used portions
> > of the fs.
>
> Yes, it can. But you achieve the same (only used stuff is backed up)
> with a simpler tool like "tar" as well.
>
> > So eg if you're backing up a 20GB partition of which only 1GB
> > is in use, then using partimage it will be very quick and the resulting
> > image very small.
>
> Then the tar file will also be just 1GB.
>
> I really don't see the benefit in using things like partimage or
> Ghost.
>
> Michael



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[gentoo-user] Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Jonathan Haws]

I am having a major problem right now with my laptop.

I regularly make backups of my system using Norton Ghost 2003 to DVD.  
However, my laptop crashed and I tried to restore my backup that I had made 
and it restores just find but when I try and boot it tells me that my Ext3 
filesystem is corrupt and had errors and I would have to run fsck manually.

When I ran fsck it told be that about every inode was invalid and that Group X 
had all sorts of other problems (I can't remember every little detail).

Doesn't Ghost work with Ext3?  What can I do to recover my system without 
reinstalling from scratch?

Thanks!

Jon

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Re: [gentoo-user] Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Rasmus Andersen]

On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 09:51:47PM +1300, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> Understood - I have seen that article too. I must say, I've mainly had 
> experience with 'dump' on Freebsd and 'xfsdump' on Linux, and never had 
> restore issues with *either* of these. Now I'm not sure whether these are 
> supposed to be better than 'dump' on Linux aimed at ext2|3 filesystems - 
> certainly Freebsd's 'dump' has an option to tell it that it is dumping a 
> 'live' filesystem, and the man pages for xfsrestore have notes concerning 
> what happens when restoring an (xfs)dump from a 'live' filesystem - so they 
> may well be!

FreeBSD's softupdates should make filesystem state always consistent,
metadatawise. Or so I think I remember, its been a while. That might
aleviate some of the problems noted on the dump page I referenced.

> On the other hand I've certainly routinely seen cases of people using dd 
> (rsync, cpio, tar etc) and coming to grief at restore time. I am reluctant 
> to suggest that folks use xfs and hence get access to xfsdump, as one of 
> the nice things  about Linux is the  choice of a variety of filesystems - 
> but it is pretty important to get able to backup of (for instance ) / ... 
> and you usually don't have much option other than doing it live!

I use rdiff-backup for my backups but then again I have low requirements
wrt. consistency outside file-level. I have considered LVM snapshots
since I use LVM already but havent bothered so far.

Cheers,
  Rasmus
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Re: [gentoo-user] Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Mark Kirkwood]

Rasmus Andersen wrote:
>
>
> FreeBSD's softupdates should make filesystem state always consistent,
> metadatawise. Or so I think I remember, its been a while. That might
> aleviate some of the problems noted on the dump page I referenced.
>
>   
>
Freebsd's dump -L (live option) uses ufs2 snapshot capability to ensure 
consistency, so its dump is reasonably smart. (FWIW / on Freebsd usually 
does not have softupdates specified, so usually won't help here). So 
yeah, it looks like some care is needed with plain old 'dump' on Linux - 
which is a bit of a pest!
> I use rdiff-backup for my backups but then again I have low requirements
> wrt. consistency outside file-level. I have considered LVM snapshots
> since I use LVM already but havent bothered so far.
>
>
>   
Right - what you intend the backup to protect against drives all this 
sort of stuff.



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Re: [gentoo-user] Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Jonathan Haws]

On Sunday March 2 2008 16:43, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> Right - what you intend the backup to protect against drives all this
> sort of stuff.

The thing that is driving my backups is a hard disk failure.  Hence I was 
using Ghost instead of something else so I can backup the entire drive and 
not just a single partition.  That enables the quickest recovery of the 
entire system in the event of a failure.

I have looked everywhere I can think of to find a tool that is similar to 
Ghost that will backup the entire hard drive to an image that I can put to 
DVD, without including free blocks on the disk (I don't want an 80GB image of 
an 80GB drive when only 5GB are in use at the time).  Does anyone know of a 
tool capable of this that runs on Linux and has FULL Linux fs support?

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[gentoo-user] Re: Ghosting a Ext3 partition

[Michael Schmarck]

Jonathan Haws <Jonathan.Haws@sdl.usu.edu> wrote:

> On Sunday March 2 2008 16:43, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
>> Right - what you intend the backup to protect against drives all this
>> sort of stuff.
> 
> The thing that is driving my backups is a hard disk failure.

Of course :)

> Hence I was 
> using Ghost instead of something else so I can backup the entire drive and
> not just a single partition.  That enables the quickest recovery of the
> entire system in the event of a failure.

Depends. If you'd just store tar files, you'd just have to create the
filesystem beforehand and then restore the tar files. Won't take much
longer than restoring a Ghost image, I'd suppose.

> I have looked everywhere I can think of to find a tool that is similar to
> Ghost that will backup the entire hard drive to an image that I can put to
> DVD, without including free blocks on the disk (I don't want an 80GB image
> of
> an 80GB drive when only 5GB are in use at the time).

That's why I'd rather use tar... An additional benefit is, that tar
is *MUCH* simpler than Ghost (or partimage). Because of that, you could
use your tar file in many more applications (for example if you want
to have a look at what the file was at your last backup).

> Does anyone know of 
> a tool capable of this that runs on Linux and has FULL Linux fs support?

partimage.

Michael

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