[CentOS] [Slightly OT] Data Preservation - More

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:54:28 -0700 CentOS mailing list <centos at 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
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>                                                                                          

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