General :: Best Script To Have Rsync Make Image File Of Hard Drive
May 9, 2011
I have never used rsync before, only DD. But from what I have been reading, rsync is better becasue it will basically mirror your hard drive, thus being able to run the cloned software from the new hard drive. My problem is I do not know what is the best commands or even the basic commands to use in rsync. I am trying to make an image from a external hard drive to a usb drive. That way my chances of messing up he original software is not as risky becasue I'll just restore the image onto another hard drive. Does anyone know the best script to have rsync make an image file of a hard drive and place it on a usb drive and then restore it?
CentOS 5.2 64bit 2.6.18-92.el5xen. Use rsync with --link-dest for nightly backups, works well. Was recently asked to start weekly backups to an external drive for off-site storage. The regular syncing works but hard linking seems to be ignored. So the backup is long with no space saving advantage. Here is an example of the command being run:
I have an OpenBSD and a FreeBSD system and a mac. I also have a Linux server. What i would like to do is back up all these systems to an external hard-drive using rsync when the external usb disk is connected to my linux box.If i format the external usb disk with cfdisk and the create a non-bootable ext3 file system on this external disk and create and put all the necessary public keys on the Linux box then from the BSD's or the mac issue the command:
Code:
Will this back up the entire systems so that they can be restored in the event of an emergency? I should store each OS just in a separate disk file of the external usb drive each time right? Because i would rather not have to format the external usb drive for each different OS. Would this work? and would the restoration command for these BSD's be:
Code:
I just need to know the basics. I'm sure given that i'll be able to automate the process. I don't want to clone the disks for forensics. I just want to have a way of restoring to a clean OS. This is the most basic question:All the howto's never mention whether or not you have to have an rsync server running on the machine your backing up to. So do you just push or pull from one end of the connection only or do you have to have a client at one end and a server at the other, as is traditional?
As my proficiency with Linux improves slowly, I've been trying to find the answers for myself, but in this situation I must admit I find myself rather stumped. I have a perfectly nicely working Fedora 12 install on an 80GB SATA drive, and when it hit an error and wouldn't boot last week (easily fixed with fsck from the initial command line) I panicked and ordered a new 250 GB drive. It got here and I might as well use it, I thought to myself, so I went about trying to figure out how to move my install without having to reset all of my settings, programs and so on. I didn't want to mess with dd because I'm not so so clear on resizing my partitions once the copy is done (if someone thinks this is a better idea I'm open to suggestions.) After some poking around I found this set of instructions which I attempted to follow to the letter, but hit some snags. I understand this thread I am referring to may be a bit outdated, which is why (I assume) I hit a bump here
Code: # mount /dev/hdy1 /boot mount returns an error demanding I specify the file system type. At a loss, I barreled on until Code:
[Code]...
To summarize, I partitioned and mounted my new drive using fdfisk and the instructions provided above, then used rsync to copy over all of the files, so as far as I know the new drive is ready to go, just not yet bootable. Opening the Grub.conf file in Kwrite (as root) returns a blank page. What do I do now?
As a side note, you can see that I am not too squeamish about the terminal, so I would prefer to find a "command line only" solution to this relatively simple (?) procedure.
I've performed a clean install of Linux on my system, and would like to create a snapshot of my whole disk so that I can go back to a fresh state immediately.
I used to use DriveImage XML and it was a FANTASTIC program, but unfortunately the boot CD containing it can only be created by having Windows installed. So it might be time to explore a new program that is equally simple and effective as that one.
I'd like your recommendations of imaging programs that are free, and that work off a boot CD/DVD (because the live backup thing generally takes much longer for imaging an entire disk).
One thing I liked about DriveImage XML was that it stored the backup in a fairly readable format, so if one day DriveImage XML were no longer available you wouldn't lose your backed up data. Any such programs?
Also, would these programs work for a drive that contains an encrypted root partition (i.e. enabling the encryption checkbox in the CentOS installation)?
I acquired an old IBM Thinkpad 770e the other day and it runs fine but I have an issue installing Linux on it. It has a floppy drive in it not a cd drive. It also does not have an ethernet jack or wifi.
I did clone my external firewall image to the drive but that image is partitioned in such a way to make it impractical for a laptop/desktop system. So I know that the machine will boot off a floppy and it will run off the hard drive. The bios test utility reports no hardware problems.
What I had hoped to do was to install some suitable distro to it. Not sure which one yet, any recommends? Damn Small Linux would be good except that you are limited to what they offer. I would also prefer to stay with a debian based distro.
The issue is install media. Floppy install images are not practical, and there is no cd drive. Is it possible to boot off a floppy and then chroot to, say a usb flash drive to do the install?
I do have a wifi card (d-link DWL-G650) that fits the micor-channel slot but it requires the madwifi driver which needs the kernel source and depends to be able to install. Not something that normally works out of the box so to speak.
Another question that comes to mind, Is it possible to dd a usb boot image to a hard drive and have it work?
We're in the process of implementing an offsite backup of all our servers to a remote Linux server. We're using rsync over ssh.What I've found is that characters such as ±, ¶,´ and £ are replaced on the Linux server with underscores.I don't mind if it changes these characters in the filenames of documents, but when it renames a language pack from Espa±ol.clx to Espa_ol.clx, it could cause issues for us further down the line.
What do I need to do differently to make the special characters copy over correctly? For the initial sync which will take place locally, before the machine is moved offsite, I have SAMBA enabled. I am able to copy files from Windows to the Samba share, retaining the original filename, though it looks different in the Linux directory listing, i.e. t̻st becomes ĻstThese files get deleted by rsync when it runs, as it does not match the filenames.
is there a way to write/unpack .qcow2 hard disk image directly to real hard drive in Linux?(I know it's possible to unpack .qcow2 to .raw and then dd to drive, but I'd like to skip .raw since its large)
Image Hard drive Ubuntu Operating system 9.10 Complete back up and restore. Changing over Hard Drives need a complete back up not just save files. So the image can be restored on any hard drive that restores the computer to its original state before it was imaged.
when i use rsync command to backup my image file , it shows the following error message.
bash: line 1: /usr/bin/rsync: Argument list too long rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync error: remote command could not be run (code 126) at io.c(463) [receiver=2.6.8]
The command which i used is rsync -avrl -e ssh cms@server:/data/cms/data/images/* /mnt/Backup/Intranet_cms_backup/images
I have a home network that includes a couple of computers {A, B, C, D}. currently, I have a cron jon that runs every minute and updates (using rsync) the hard drives of computers {B, C, D} with the contents of hard drive {A}. So far everything works great, as hard drive {A} barely has any information on it. Now, I am about to copy a lot of information (about 8 GBs) to hard drive {A}. Naturally, the cron job will run (as it runs every 1-min) and try to 'sync' the contents with hard drives {B, C, D}.
Given my network (100Mbit/sec), there is no way the cron job will be able to 'copy' the contents to hard drives {B, C, D} in one minute. It will take much more time. Does this situation create a problem? meaning, will cron re-run a new rsync instance 1min later, even though an existing rsync process is running and still copying information to hard drives {B,C,D}? Will my backups be hurt / slowed down tremendously because of this?
I have an OpenBSD and a FreeBSD system and a mac. I also have a Ubuntu server. What i would like to do is back up all these systems to an external hard-drive using rsync when the external usb disk is connected to my Ubuntu box.If i format the external usb disk with cfdisk and the create a non-bootable ext3 file system on this external disk and create and put all the necessary public keys on the Linux box then from the BSD's or the mac issue the command:
Code: #rsync --progress -avhe ssh --delete / user@ubuntuBox:/usb/disk/path/dir/ Will this back up the entire systems so that they can be restored in the event of an emergency? I should store each OS just in a separate disk file of the external usb drive each time right?? Because i would rather not have to format the external usb drive for each different OS. Would this work? and would the restoration command for these BSD's be:
Code: rsync -avze ssh UbuntuBox:/usb/disk/path / I just need to know the basics. I'm sure given that i'll be able to automate the process. I don't want to clone the disks for forensics. I just want to have a way of restoring to a clean OS. This is the most basic question:All the howto's never mention whether or not you have to have an rsync server running on the machine your backing up to. So do you just push or pull from one end of the connection only or do you have to have a client at one end and a server at the other, as is traditional?
I don't understand this: I did Quote: rsync -avz --delete /media/PPT-WORDS centguy@centos52-64-dell:/media/ while I was at home connecting my portable hard drive to a desktop centos52 machine. On the next day, I came to the office and I connect my portable hard drive to another centos52 machine, do do
i was wondering if it is possible too use the DD command to make an image file of my blackberry 8330?i need it of the onboard memory and not the external memory card.
one would have to exclude certain folders / directories but would the backup be possible if the system is up and running in its native "live" state ? Which directories could be excluded ? Does swap need to be turned off ? I would like to make incremental backups on a separate partition of the same hard drive. I will endeavour to backup the MBR/ Partition table using dd.
I got a new game on DVD a while back but my computer isn't powerfull enough to run it in windows a friend sugested I use Ubuntu.so I download it and used Nero to copy an image of my DVD to my hard drive but Ubuntu dosent recignise the file which is and "NRG".I thought image files where "ISO".
however, I couldn't find a place in which it would really fit well. I have 2 hard drives, that I want to backup. I've heard of servers and things like that using a hard drive image. Is this similar to a disk image? What are the benefits of using hard drive imaging as opposed to using DVDs? And perhaps most importantly: how would I go about it using Fedora 10 (64 bit)?
I did something to my Windows partition that seams to be unrecoverable,so I thought that I would get my hard drive re-formated. But, I want to store my OS image (I'm sure that thats the right term... I'm just gonna hop you lknow what I'm talking about) on a CD. I know programs that do this for windows but I don't know any that can do this for Linux/Ubuntu.
I have an unused laptop computer with an WindowsXP installation lying around. I decided to use this computer with Ubuntu for the next few months but it is absolutely crucial to preserve the current WindowsXP state somehow. Is there a safe way to "conserve" that very Windows installation as an image so I can recopy it later on? I'd like to clean out the computer completely to install Ubuntu afterwards. After using Ubuntu I want to install the old WindowsXP again as it was before. Is that even possible? Power on and XP boots as before? I mean driver, accounts, passwords etc? What would you recommend?
I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 and have configured it the way I like. Is there a way I can make a restore image to use for backups? I know there's software like Acronis for Windows to make bootable images, can you do something similar in Linux?
Is there a software utility out there for Ubuntu that can make a backup of the hard drive my Ubuntu 10.4 is installed on?
I have used Symantec Norton Ghost for Windows before. Is there a similar program for Ubuntu? I would also like to use the backup of the hard drive to reinstall on the same drive after a format.
Also, what would happen to the GRUB loader if I were to copy it back onto the hard drive?
I'm overall realitively new to Ubuntu 11.0.4 and I had some questions regarding this operating system. I just wanted to inform everyone, that I'm attempting to make a transition, from a life time Windows user and a current Windows 7 Ultimate user, to being a Ubuntu user.
I am becoming fedup with Windows 7, because i dislike how much system resources, it requires to run, and in addition I'm skeptical about Windows security. I had a lot of bad experiences with the Windows updates as well, so I was kind of alienated, as one can imagine. What I did like about Windows 7, is how easy it was, to configure the user group policies. I was wondering if you were able to do that in Ubuntu latest release.
I also was wondering, if it were possible, to create a hard drive image, that I can just load up, if I ever needed to reformat, like I did in Windows 7.
I have an image fiole of a hard drive which has been encrypted. When i load the file in to software to view the disk in a hexidecimal format, i need to find there the boot sectors are etc I also need to find out the "md5 hash" which is used?
Thought I'd post it here because it's more server related than desktop... I have a script that does:
[Code]....
This is used to sync my local development snapshot with the live web server. There has to be a more compact way of doing this? Can I combine some of the rsyncs? Can I make the rsync set or keep the user and group affiliations? Can I exclude .* yet include .htaccess?
i downloaded the gnome 3 based on fedora from www.gnome3.org. But when i run the image i dont see an option to install to my harddrive it just runs from my cd rom drive. Can any please lead me with instructions as to where and how i can install it to my harddrive.
Does anybody know how to or even if it's possible to create an ISO image (a snapshot, if you will) of an entire volume on a Linux box so that I can use that ISO to burn to a CD use in the future for creating an identical configuation on another box (which would have the same exact hardware)? It is to my understanding that I'd have to first create the ISO file of the entire system and then burn it to a CD and somehow mount it onto the hard drive of the identical-system-to-be.
I'm thinking that I'd have to use the "mkisofs" command but I'm not sure exactly how to do this. P.S. I do not want to use any 3rd party applications.
Machine is a Dell PE 1750. Previously running 5.2 or 5.1 32 bit. Tried to install 5.3 i386 but getting this error,
Error An error occurred transferring the install image to your hard drive. You are probably out of disk space.
Click ok Install starting Starting install process. This may take several minutes. Exception Occurred Traceback (most recent call first ): File "/tmp/treedir.14202/instimage/usr/lib/anaconda/yuminstall.py", line 711, in _run self.ts.ts.scriptFd = instLog.fileno()
i want to setup multiple xen on a remote server in a datacenter, this is first time i am doing it, i want to know when we do it on a local machine it asks for bootable DVD to be inserted, but that can't be done on a remote server, so is there a way we can give it the path of some directory which behaves as a bootable dvd and install the os
