RE: [Trinux-talk] Q - Timothy Burt - Backup or clone hard drive

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Hi Riaan,

If you have the "master image" on a single partition somewhere, you
could always just use dd to copy it and to master it onto the boxes
from the cd. Something like this (assuming your master image is on
partition /dev/hda3, and from what I read below, it seems like the
target will be /dev/hda3, too.)

$ dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/home/riaan/master-image.img
(replace /home/riaan/ with wherever you want to store the image
temporarily)

Then you put master-image.img on a data CD with the CD software of
your choice.

Then in your script, to put the image onto your other boxes:

# dd if=/mnt/cdrom/master-image.img of=/dev/hda3

Voila! Should be a perfect bit-for-bit copy of your master image. The
only problem I can see with this scheme is if your /dev/hda3
partition is too big to fit on one CD. If so, if you have a spare
disk around, make a partition on that disk exactly big enough to hold
the files, make your master image on that partition, and then use
that as the "if" parameter to the first dd command above.

I may have missed something, so let me know if you have any questions
about this approach. That's how I'd do it if I were tackling this
problem.

Stephen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Riaan Labuschagne [mailto:ri...@ra...]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 6:14 PM
> To: Trinux-Talk (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: [Trinux-talk] Q - Timothy Burt - Backup or clone 
> hard drive
> 
> 
> Exactly what I am busy with. The stores where our software (winNT)
> is curently running in are distributed all over South Africa, 
> which is quit a
> vast space.
> 
> The staff at the stores where these machines are in operation 
> are also as
> technically inclined as my cat, (ZERO). So I am busy building 
> a script that
> will autoexecute in Trinux (once the store manager has put 
> the cd and floppy
> in the machine and rebooted.). Then through the script
> 1.)delete one of the NTFS partitions on the Disk. (It 
> currently has two
> partitions, one 2GB and one 6GB) I have to preserve the 6Gb 
> partition due to
> the data contained on it. (Here I am still OK thanks to 
> Timothy's cloning
> article)
> 2.) reformat the /dev/hda so that Debian will run on it.  --> 
> 50Mb /boot,
> 120Mb swap, 1200Mb / (Still no problems.)
> 3.) copy the root filesystem from a cd (due to the fact that 
> I cannot use
> the wan due to bandwidth constraints) onto the newly 
> formatted disk. (Here I
> am a bit out of my league with the, I folloed Timothy's 
> cloning article but
> the instead of sending it to a disk sent the data to a NFS 
> share. The data
> seems to cpio fine. It is only when I run chroot that I get 
> the applet error
> (I tried to reinstall the baselib.tgz but got;
> 
> "trinux> getpkg baselib
> Retrieving http://172.30.166.8/riaan/baselib.tgz
> Initializing baselib
> -- Rebuilding ld.so.cache
> Segmentation fault
> trinux> chroot
> chroot: applet not found"
> 
> 4.) If I use the command "lilo -r /new" as per the cloning 
> article I get " a
> segment to large error"
> 
> once I go and use the lilo on the mounted filesystem /mnt/sbin/lilo
> -r /mnt -C etc/lilo.conf -v -v -v it seems as though MBR is written
> to 5.) phone the store manager ask them to reboot the machines and
> have a stable env. from where to run our system.
> 
> The above mentioned are just for those "listening to this 
> thread to know
> what I am trying to do. My questions however are:
> 1. Can I tar the filesystem that I have made a copy of put it 
> on cd, untar
> the tar onto the machine once the cd is in the machine at the 
> store without
> losing files or permissions. (I got very cool reply from 
> Timothy and will
> try it once I am back at work tomorrow morning (00:09 now) 
> P.S. Timothy I am
> not sure what other file system I can use other than ISO? 
> Will the fact that
> I tar the filesystem not solve my file permissions problems>
> 
> 2.Is the whole Linux (Debian ) file system actually just a 
> bunch of files in
> a bunch of directories that will, once they are copied to 
> another machine
> act as it was cloned (varying sizes of the disk obviously 
> excluded) or is
> there underlying detail that stops me from just copying teh 
> files over to a
> new harddrive and expecting the machine to just boot up and 
> act like the
> master machine.
> 
> 3. If the baselib package is installed at boot time but I 
> still get chroot
> applet errors after I reinstalled it: should I uninstall the 
> baselibs (How?)
> and try ad reinstall it romm scratch.
> 
> 4. Once I get all this mess sorted out will everyone that 
> helped me come for
> a meal at my place (Cape Town SA --> sunny beaches nice girls 
> and a lot of
> sun?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Riaan Labuschagne
> e-mail: ri...@ra...
> +27 83 4444148
> +27 21 982 2223
> +27 21 982 2225 (fax)
> Visit http://www.radioretail.co.za
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Timothy Burt [mailto:tb...@ar...
> Sent: 02 October 2002 10:54
> To: P60
> Cc: ri...@ra...; Trinux-Talk (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: [Trinux-talk] Q - Timothy Burt - Backup or clone 
> hard drive
> 
> 
> 
> Better to mail them the floppy, with an ssh login configured. 
>  Then you
> can make adjustments, monitor progress and fix problems during the
> upgrade.
> 
> And never leave your office. :-)
> 
> Always good for the outer offices to have, in case their machine
> won't boot.  You can ssh into Trinux, and look at your disk, or 
> what is left of
> it.  Even fdisk and reformat it from the command line.  And 
> overnight them
> a new disk drive, if all else fails.  With Trinux, you can do 
> the setup
> from your chair.
> 
> Of course, with a script in /tux/last, it can become a 
> brutally efficient
> Windows exterminator.
> 
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, P60 wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > > I will definitely look at it but the problem is that I 
> doing the restore
> > > over a wan i.e. very low bandwidth.
> > >
> > Thinking about 430 machines, walking around with a CD, will 
> be more a
> > problem I guess. If you're handy on writing scripts, you 
> could have each
> > machine that already has the Debian-stuff on it serving (with
> > netcat 
> again)
> > to the NT ones who you'll have to boot from the trinux 
> netfloppy with a
> nice
> > little script in /tux/last. That way you'll only have to 
> walk around once
> > with a single floppy. Then have a nap :-). The lower the 
> bandwidth, the
> > longer the nap.
> >
> > Arne
> >
> >
> >
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> > Tri...@li...
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> >
> 
> --
> --------------------
> Timothy Burt
> General Manager
> Arbor Group LLC
> Los Angeles, Calif. USA
> 
> 
> 
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