Hi All,
As it turns out these boxes are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and not Windows!. I am not sure how the person who asked me to do the work does not know what he had! I guess he was the CEO though!
So I think this process becomes simpler.
I should just be able to insert the live cd and do a cp -r on / to the destination USB drive, correct?
-ML
ML wrote:
Hi All,
As it turns out these boxes are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and not Windows!. I am not sure how the person who asked me to do the work does not know what he had! I guess he was the CEO though!
So I think this process becomes simpler.
I should just be able to insert the live cd and do a cp -r on / to the destination USB drive, correct?
cp -a is better
Nicolas,
As it turns out these boxes are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and not Windows!. I am not sure how the person who asked me to do the work does not know what he had! I guess he was the CEO though!
So I think this process becomes simpler.
I should just be able to insert the live cd and do a cp -r on / to the destination USB drive, correct?
cp -a is better
'man cp'
-a Same as -pPR options. Preserves structure and attributes of files but not directory structure.
Nice, thank you, I did not think about this option.
Best, ML
2009/10/3 ML mailinglists@mailnewsrss.com:
Nice, thank you, I did not think about this option.
I'd use rsync -av Will preserve everything and can resume where it left off if interrupted. Usually used over networks, but equally happy with local file systems.
Ben
At Sat, 3 Oct 2009 07:18:51 -0700 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
Hi All,
As it turns out these boxes are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and not Windows!. I am not sure how the person who asked me to do the work does not know what he had! I guess he was the CEO though!
So I think this process becomes simpler.
I should just be able to insert the live cd and do a cp -r on / to the destination USB drive, correct?
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.
-ML _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi Robert,
I should just be able to insert the live cd and do a cp -r on / to the destination USB drive, correct?
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?
If not, how do I know what the partitions are that I need to go after on this old drive after being booted to a LiveCD. I chose a LiveCD because without it the machine takes an hour to boot die to DNS issues and time-outs since moving it to my location (and the original location does not exist either)
Best, -ML
-Jason
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.)
Best, -ML
At Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:33:48 -0700 CentOS mailing list centos@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
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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.
At Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:19:48 -0700 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
Hi Robert,
I should just be able to insert the live cd and do a cp -r on / to the destination USB drive, correct?
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?
You can't just 'cp' the VolGroup00 itself, since it is not a mountable file system.
If not, how do I know what the partitions are that I need to go after on this old drive after being booted to a LiveCD. I chose a LiveCD because without it the machine takes an hour to boot die to DNS issues and time-outs since moving it to my location (and the original location does not exist either)
There are *probably* two file systems: /boot on a regular partition (probably the first partition on the hard drive) and / on /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. You'll have to look at /etc/fstab closely. There might be more than two file systems -- eg /home, etc. on its own file system.
It should be possible to boot into single user mode. In single user mode it won't even try to bring up the network and won't have DNS issues. When grub starts, hit the 'Any Key' and then edit (e) the boot command and add 'single' to the end of the kernel line and boot that. The advantage of booting the native O/S (in single user mode) is that you will see exactly what the file system layout is, instead of having to poke around and possibly miss something important.
Best, -ML
-Jason
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi Robert,
There are *probably* two file systems: /boot on a regular partition (probably the first partition on the hard drive) and / on /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. You'll have to look at /etc/fstab closely. There might be more than two file systems -- eg /home, etc. on its own file system.
It should be possible to boot into single user mode. In single user mode it won't even try to bring up the network and won't have DNS issues. When grub starts, hit the 'Any Key' and then edit (e) the boot command and add 'single' to the end of the kernel line and boot that. The advantage of booting the native O/S (in single user mode) is that you will see exactly what the file system layout is, instead of having to poke around and possibly miss something important.
OK, I booted into single user mode and when starting up I see that it says /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 has two volumes.
it the checks /boot and I am at sh-3.00#
in /etc/fstab I see: /dev/VolGroup00-LogVol00 / ext3 [snip] Label=/boot /boot ext3 [snip] none /dev/pts none /dev/shm none /proc none /sys /dev/VolGroup00-LogVol01 swap /dev/hda /media/cdrecorder /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk
So if I understand this I can just go after / doing rsync -av?
Thank you for the help thus far!
-Jason
At Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:54:28 -0700 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
Hi Robert,
There are *probably* two file systems: /boot on a regular partition (probably the first partition on the hard drive) and / on /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00. You'll have to look at /etc/fstab closely. There might be more than two file systems -- eg /home, etc. on its own file system.
It should be possible to boot into single user mode. In single user mode it won't even try to bring up the network and won't have DNS issues. When grub starts, hit the 'Any Key' and then edit (e) the boot command and add 'single' to the end of the kernel line and boot that. The advantage of booting the native O/S (in single user mode) is that you will see exactly what the file system layout is, instead of having to poke around and possibly miss something important.
OK, I booted into single user mode and when starting up I see that it says /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 has two volumes.
it the checks /boot and I am at sh-3.00#
in /etc/fstab I see: /dev/VolGroup00-LogVol00 / ext3 [snip] Label=/boot /boot ext3 [snip] none /dev/pts none /dev/shm none /proc none /sys /dev/VolGroup00-LogVol01 swap /dev/hda /media/cdrecorder /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk
So if I understand this I can just go after / doing rsync -av?
Mostly. What you *really* should do is:
create two directories on the target disk (actually more if you are using this disk for all of the machines):
mkdir -vp /media/usbdisk/machine1/root /media/usbdisk/machine1/boot
Then copy the two file systems:
rsync -avx /boot/ /media/usbdisk/machine1/boot/ rsync -avx / /media/usbdisk/machine1/root/
One the second machine, use 'machine2' instead of 'machine1', similarly for third, fourth, and fifth machines.
You don't need to worry about /dev/VolGroup00-LogVol01 -- this is the swap partition.
Thank you for the help thus far!
-Jason _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Benjamin Donnachie -
Les Mikesell -
ML -
Nicolas Thierry-Mieg -
Robert Heller