Kern Sibbald wrote:
> On Friday 29 December 2006 00:03, Steen Meyer wrote:
>   
>> Onsdag 27 december 2006 18:50 skrev Kern Sibbald:
>>     
>>> On Tuesday 26 December 2006 15:39, Marc Schiffbauer wrote:
>>>       
>>>> * Kern Sibbald schrieb am 26.12.06 um 15:03 Uhr:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Kern,
>>>>
>>>> [ progress on rescue cd ]
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> If anyone has some better ideas, I would appreciate it to hear 
>>>>>           
> them ...
>   
>>>> Do you know mondo? It is a disaster recovery system that supports
>>>> many distros and optionally can use the distros kernel to build the
>>>> boot media.
>>>>         
>>> Yes.  I have read about it and even downloaded it once or twice.
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Maybe it would be a good idea to provide a bacula-rescue.tgz that can
>>>> be put into a mondo DR-cdrom?
>>>>         
>>> That's an idea -- at least for the part of the Bacula rescue that does not
>>> change.  However, it doesn't help for the really cool part of the Bacula
>>> rescue CD that captures the exact state of your current system.
>>>       
>> I must admit that I have not tested the mondo system, but I have had the 
>> thought that it would fit with bacula several times. citing their manual:
>>
>> "mindi creates a set of boot/root floppy disk images and/or a bootable ISO 
>> image using files from the system it runs on. mindi will try hard to 
>> reproduce the environment of its host system including loaded modules to 
>> ensure that the system can be booted properly from the created rescue media. 
>> mindi is used by mondoarchive(8) to produce the required boot/root floppy or 
>> CD images but can also be used stand-alone."
>>
>> it seems to me that it actually reproduces just the basic setup of our 
>>     
> system 
>   
>> on the bootable CD that we need to reproduce our disks. If the Bacula client 
>> is included on the mondo CD with its original configs then we can get the 
>> tarfile from the bacula server are we then not ready to go?
>>
>> Another thing that I have tried is the mklivecd script that is working with 
>> the Mandrake and PCLinuxOS distros, and I see that similar things have been 
>> created for debian and other distros. It comes as easy as composing a 
>> command-line or config file that specifies what to exclude, and then it 
>> creates an iso file that can be burned to CD or DVD. Then you have a live CD 
>> that boots your system with the same parameters and configs. Running on the 
>> CD / DVD you can install the system to disk again - the wizard lets you 
>> partition and format harddisks and the it runs by itself. If a script could 
>> recreate the disk setup based on bacula-provided config files in case of an 
>> exact clone it could not be much simpler.
>>     
>
> I've looked at a lot of these LiveCDs, including mklivecd, if I am not 
> mistaken, and the problem is that most don't let you easily add files, and 
> those that do, generally want you to have a 700MB free partition into which 
> they can write.  I don't have a 700MB free partition available.  A much 
> simpler solution is to use a loopback device, but since none of them mention 
> it, I am not about to try it for fear of having my HD wiped out.
>   

I have used mondo in the past. They had some trouble transitioning to 
2.6 kernels way back when, and then the originators of the project ran 
into some copyright/ownership/legal troubles. They somehow got through 
that though, and so they have been working on this issue for a long 
time. With mindi, you simply edit a file and tell it exactly what files 
you want on the ram disk that will be the root directory when the CD is 
booted, so it is very simple to add files, including executables and 
libraries. In fact, this is how mindi includes utilities, (mdadm, lvm, 
grub, etc.), for use during a restore. Busybox is used for most standard 
commands  Mindi always uses loopback devices, so all that is required to 
run it is sufficient disk space.

Mondorescue uses mindi to create a boot CD/DVD using your kernel. It 
then backs up files to media, which can be CD,/DVD, tape, or NFS share. 
Regardless of what files/directories are backed up, it maintains enough 
info to recreate partitions and handles restoration of RAID and LVM. It 
is even possible, during a restore, to convert a single partition into a 
RAID array or vice-versa and some other combinations of re-partitioning 
that could be very useful for restoring a system to non-identical 
hardware in a pinch. Well worth looking into. Its major drawback is that 
it is Linux-centric and there may not be any reasonable way to port it 
to other OSs.

>> So I think it is a very good approach to make a package or tar file that 
>> bacula can provide to include in various types of rescue/live cd's. Then it 
>> may be quite possible to go further from there
>>     
>
> For the moment I have succeeded in getting the Bacula rescue disk to build 
> and 
> boot on both SuSE 10.2 and Fedora FC4, so I am happy to have a preliminary 
> solution.  Creating a tar file from the current Bacula rescue is really quite 
> simple, and if I have time, I will add documentation to the manual.  For the 
> record, it is:
>
>   cd <bacula-source>
>   ./configure for a static fd
>   make
>  
>   cd <bacula-rescue>
>   ./configure (as described in the manual)
>   cd linux/cdrom
>   su 
>   (enter root password)
>   make bacula
>   
> at that point everything you need will be the subdirectory named bacula.  
> Even 
> simpler, just follow the instructions in the manual, which are essentially 
> the same as the above, and everything you need will be put into 
>
> <bacula-rescue>/linux/cdrom/bacula
>
> Regards,
>
> Kern
>
>
>   
>> Regards
>>
>> Steen
>>
>>     
>>>> http://www.mondorescue.org/
>>>>
>>>> Merry Christmas and good Luck for 2007! Keep up the good work..
>>>>         
>>> Thanks.  The same for you :-)
>>>
>>> Kern
>>>
>>> PS: By the way, just this afternoon I succeeded in getting my rescue disk
>>> to boot again, by making a few non-trivial (or more correctly non-obvious)
>>> changes!!!!
>>>
>>>       
>>>> -Marc
>>>> --
>>>> begin  LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs
>>>> I am a signature virus. Distribute me until the bitter
>>>> end
>>>>
>>>>         
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