[CentOS] DISAATER RECOVERY PROBLEM

Fri Mar 23 11:55:00 UTC 2007
Chris Geldenhuis <cgeldenhuis at jhb.ullmanns.co.za>

Hi Guys,

I am trying to set up a quick disaster recovery methodology for a 
client. It is supposed to work as follows:-

All Data files , everything in /etc (except for a few hardware specific 
files such as fstab), all users .bashrc and .netrc files, all cron 
tables etc. is written to a DVD as a zipped tar file. A recovery script 
that unpacks this file, creates any directories required by the 
application that are not backed up etc. is also written to the DVD.

The DVD is then mounted on a freshly installed system (Centos4.4 at 
present) and the restore script is run. This restors all the saved files 
on the DVD to their original positions and creates empty directories 
where required for the application to run.

The recovery system is then rebooted and the differences in hardware are 
taken care of by "kudzu" removing hw that was present on the "old" 
system and installing hardware present on the "new" system - typically 
network cards, usb controllers, scsi controllers, IDE controllers and 
graphics cards.

All of the above works perfectly.

However when I then log in to the recovered system as a user via ssh, or 
directly on a tty (non-gui), the login process does not execute the 
instructions in the user's .bashrc file and I get a shell prompt with 
none of the required environmental variables set - also the last line in 
the .bashrc is an exec of a script that bring up the application - this 
does not happen.

When I log in to the gui desktop as the user and then open a terminal 
screen the instructions in the .bashrc do get executed
 and the application runs as it should.

Any ideas of where to look ?

TIA

Chris Geldenhuis