[CentOS] [Slightly OT] Data Preservation - More

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Sat Oct 3 15:48:37 UTC 2009


At Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:33:48 -0700 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> More follow-up as I am discovering and learning:
> 
> >> You don't even need the live cd.  Just boot up single user, plug in
> >> the
> >> USB drive, format it with ext2 or ext3 to match the box and do your  
> >> cp
> >> -r, although there are probably better options (eg dump/restore, tar,
> >> etc.) that might do a better job. Warning: there might be more than
> >> one
> >> partition (eg /boot and/or /home might be a separate partition, esp.
> >> if
> >> the machines are using LVM).  You might need to cp each partition/ 
> >> file
> >> system separately.
> >
> > I booted to a the CentOS 5.23 LiveCD.
> >
> > Yes, it looks like LVM is running because I do have VolGroup00-
> > LogVol00 in Local Logical Volumes on the desktop.
> >
> > Can I get the whole VolGroup00 at once, I see an entry in /etc/fstab
> > for /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00?
> 
> So after booting to the CentOS 5.3 LiveCD, I can get to '/mnt/ 
> VolGroup00-LogVol00'
> 
> doing a: 'sudo du -h --summarize /mnt/VolGroup00-LogVol00' I get: 28GB  
> used.
> 
> So can I 'rsync -av /mnt/VolGroup00-LogVol00/. /mnt/disc/sda1/.'
> (sda1 is the 500GB USB Drive that I am wanting to put the data on.)

There is *probably* a /boot file system somewhere on the original
machine's disk (not even grub can boot directly from a LVM volume). The
/boot file system will contain the kernels, initrds, and grub's config
files.  Probably not much else, but if you do want to resurect these
machines as *working* systems, you will need the proper kernels.  This
is partitularly true if you want to bring them up in a virtualized
environment.  I am not sure if your rsync command will pick up the /boot
file system or not, since I am not sure if the live CD mounted under
there or mounted it as /mnt/boot or something like that.

> 
> Best,
> -ML
> 
> 
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>                                                                          

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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