[CentOS] Full server restore-point image

[Michael Kratz]

On 03/08/2007, at 7:01 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:

> Alain Reguera Delgado wrote:
>> Hi,
>> After some months of configuring and testing a small server, think
>> that would be nice to make a full server restore-point image in order
>> to recover it if something goes wrong in the future, just restoring
>> the image back and not making the full install and configure process
>> all over again. The server uses Logical Volumes.
>> I was thinking on using the CentOS LiveCD and then use dd command to
>> clone all partitions to another storage device. But I have no
>> experience on this.
>> What do you suggest ?
>
> Yes, if you have an identical drive, booting a CD and dd'ing the  
> whole image is an easy way to do it.  You can use the install CD if  
> you enter 'linux rescue' at the boot prompt.

Does this work if the hard drive isn't exactly identical?

I've previously done something similar to this from a hardware RAID5  
array to a single SATA drive.

I basically attached the SATA drive to the system, booted into single  
user mode, then DD'ed the RAID array to the SATA drive.

The SATA drive was big enough to take all of the data from the RAID  
array, and indeed DD indicated that this had occurred once it completed.



--
Michael