[CentOS] [Slightly OT] Data Preservation - More

[Les Mikesell]

ML 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.)
> 

Yes, that should work - but if you are putting several disks on the same large 
usb drive you would want to add another top level directory.  Also if you ever 
want to restore this to a bootable drive you'll need to create a matching disk 
layout and re-install grub.  Clonezilla would have done that for you with either 
windows or linux targets, but at the expense of not being able to read the files 
in the stored image.

If you aren't too concerned about making a bootable copy you could have just run 
rsync from the running machines with either a local usb target or a remote 
destination via ssh.


-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com