Subject: Re: [CentOS] Best way to duplicate a live Centos 5 server? To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Cal Sawyer <cal-s at blue-bolt.com> wrote: >> > >> > ReaR has suddenly become very interesting to me, probably explaining why >> > it utterly fails to work properly (for me).I'm using 1.13 to pull a >> > USB-based recovery image, but there's an error in the >> > backup/NETFS/default/50_make_backup.sh script that doesn't mount the USB >> > device after the mkrecovery step, so subsequent tar fails on write to >> > the non-existent mountpoint. I fixed that, but on recovery it fails to >> > mount the necessary directories on the restore drive as well, so "rear >> > recover" quickly bombs out. Is anyone having any success actually using >> > ReaR on CentOS 6.x? - csawyer > It intentionally doesn't deal with drives the kernel has marked as > removable. I had trouble with that with the main drives on a SAS > hotswap backplane in an earlier version but I think that is fixed now. > > I'd recommend asking how to override this on the ReaR mail list. > While the code seems usable (and yes, I have succeeded in using it on > Centos 6x.), the documentation either doesn't exist yet or is very out > of date. But, the authors are very responsive and it would be good > to let them know about any bugs or usability problems. The mail list > is still at sourceforge although the code has been moved to github and > there is talk of moving the list elsewhere. > > -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com ReaR hasn't posed any insurmountable problems with USB removable media but i can see SATA/SAS needing some massaging in the device detection dep't. Yes, i've gotten myself on the ReaR mailing list now. You're right - documentation is pretty dire. Guess i'm not alone in hating doing it. USB backup is broken due to the order in which path variables get set - sure is lot of fun trawling through the scripts to find out what gets set when. Hope the ReaR maintainers are interested in this and haven't gotten themselves mired in tape archive integration - i would have thought USB backup was the winner in terms of getting broad acceptance as a bare-metal DR solution. However, when it works - wow. Just restored an HP dl360 w/HWRAID to a Presario desktop machine and it lives! No network, but that's small beans compared to the larger win. - csawyer