[CentOS] How to copy a system?

Fri May 6 09:26:12 UTC 2011
Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com>

On Thu, 5 May 2011, Les Mikesell wrote:

> On 5/5/2011 4:22 PM, Dag Wieers wrote:
>
>> and it would automatically create a bootable image with your system's
>> layout and the backuppc software/configuration, and even the necessary
>> commands to automatically recover your system when doing:
>
> I don't really want a separate copy of an 'image' built.  I want
> something to do the grunge work of partitioning and creating the
> necessary filesystems, then pull the tar image from the backuppc server
> with an appropriate ssh command.

The rescue image is a boot image doing the grunge work of partitioning and 
creating the necessary filesystems and pulling the tar image from your 
server using the appropriate ssh command. (Or whatever you tell it to do 
in your specific case)

You need to boot something if you are in a disaster. And this 'something' 
needs to know about your network configuration, your system's layout and 
needs the necessary tools to restore the backup. That's the bootable 
rescue image I was referring to. It usually is between 25MB and 50MB 
depending on the size of the backup client.

The rescue image can be a kernel/ramdisk, or an ISO image, or a bootable 
USB media, or a bootable OBDR tape, or a PXE instance (if you set 
everything up to update your PXE server).


>>       rear recover
>>
>> on the rescue prompt. That's how it is done with Bacula, TSM, and others.
>
> You could probably do something very similar by generating the tar
> image(s) ahead of time from the backuppc server and storing them in your
> recovery setup.  And that would be useful for archiving, offsite, or
> cloning purposes, but the main thing I want is the ability to boot
> something that can mindlessly reconstruct a machine from last night's
> backuppc run straight out of that compressed/pooled storage.

That's already possible. ReaR can also handle the backup, on the same boot 
media if size is sufficient (so either OBDR tape, USB media or 
PXE/network), for cloning or one-shot migrations this use-case is 
indeed important too.


>>>> If you need more help, feel free to join the ReaR mailinglist on
>>>> sourceforge and ask your questions :)
>>>
>>> Would a backuppc adapter be feasible?
>>
>> Definitely, join the list and we can help you implement it.
>
> OK, I'm interested...  It's probably just a matter of generating
> whatever description of the underlying storage it needs and plugging in
> an ssh command to get the data at the right point.

Something like that, yes.

-- 
-- dag wieers, dag at wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/
-- dagit linux solutions, info at dagit.net, http://dagit.net/

[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]