Topic: SME linux and GHOST

[AaronG]

Can I ghost my SME linux server hard drive???

I wish to use this for disaster recovery purposes.

Will ghost destroy anything?


I currently have BACKUP2WS installed on my SME server and I have noticed the "Disaster Recovery backup job"

When I click into this option BACKUP2WS states the following:
"The Disaster Recovery backup job is a RAR ARchive of the minimum directories and files necessary to restore your system after completing a fresh install and installing any optional add-on rpms."

Does this mean that If i make backups using this software it will only backup the minumum settings such as IP address, host names, users etc.

I need something that will keep things such as SMTP-AUTH and other patches installed.

Is it possible to configure this to backup ABSOLUTELY EVERY SETTING AND FILE.

My thinking is that if the server blows up...
I can just do a fresh install using the CD, then restore this "DISASTER RECOVERY BACKUP" and it will all be back to normal and current to the backup date.??????


Sorry this post is sooo long.

Cheers
Aaron Glover

[girkers]

I was using a 10GB HDD for my SME server when the BIOS started to report SMART errors.  I checked the drive and sure enough it was on the way out.

I used a similar utility to "ghost" my drive to another 40GB drive and all has been great ever since, including the extra HDD space.

[ainigma32]

I've been searching for this as well. Could you let us know what you used and how you did it?

[felipevidal]

Aaron,

Take a look at Mondo Rescue.  It does work with SME server and the installer can ID version 6.0 to install the right version.  I tested it with an SME 6.01-01Custom though getting it to install was tricky, it does not ID it properly due to the "-01Custom" part. it worked fine from command line as the text gui did not work correctly.  I restored the CD onto a different PC and it booted fine so that a restore of the /home could be performed subsequently.

I obtained it by downloading the Mondo installer ISO image @ http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/

-felipe

[haynest]

Try the SME howto.

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/thaynes/E-Smith/mondoarchive/install.htm

[askelon]

Ive used Ghost to backup/restore my SME server before. It works but it doesnt seem to backup the boot info properly so I found once restored I had to do a reinstall of SME over the top, only takes a few mins to do though..  After that all was perfect..  I havent tried going to a bigger drive though..

[girkers]

I used the UBCD or the Ultimate Boot CD, http://www.ultimateboootcd.com and I used one of the disk cloning tools on that.

Unfortunately I can not remember for the life of me which one I used, but from a brief inspection of what is available on the disk I may have used PC Inspector Clone, but I can't be sure.

Whilst this worked for me I can't guarantee the outcome for other users.

[raem]

> Will ghost destroy anything?

It should copy everything as it copies the whole hard drive, but you may need to use this "fix"
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/Cloning%20drive%20with%20Ghost%20lilo.conf%20fix%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm


> I currently have BACKUP2WS installed
> Is it possible to configure this to backup
> ABSOLUTELY EVERY SETTING AND FILE.

The Disaster Recovery Job does backup all configuration settings and all user accounts & data & ibay data, so it can be used to recreate your server after doing a fresh install of the OS.

You will need to reinstall any additional rpms (contribs) that were previously installed though.

You cam modify what the backup job includes if you wish to include non standard directories in the backup.

Make sure you run a full test on the backup and restore process to prove it works correctly for you.

[ryan]

I use g4u (ghost 4 unix) to image all my 2k, XP, and linux systems at work.  I have 2 SME servers running from an g4u image.  

google g4u and take a look....using qtparted on knoppix to resize partitions, I use g4u to image partitions rather than an entire disk.  I can have XPsp2 w/ Office XP pro, MS updates, .net, mdac, xml2, acrobat, etc, running on a new Dell in about 15 minutes.  This would take hours using the OEM or MS CDs.

g4u is not full featured like enterprise ghost, but it beats the old ghost dos floppies and is open source.  Just remember these images likely won't work if applied to different PC hardware...excluding larger HDs.

ryan

[samrusso]

Hi Guys.
I was using ghost fine upto Sme6.0
Had some problems till GHost V8 came out (the latest)
Now it all works fine.
ghost disk to disk or disk to image .. whatever

Sometimes you may need to boot from a sme disk and run lilo to fix up lilo, ie. if the new drive doesn't quite boot up.
Note: You do need the latest version of ghost!

I've always got 2 ghost images as backups and quite seperate rsync backups for dynamice data.

regards
sam

[p-jones]

I have successfully ghosted A complete drive with Ghost 2003(+ All current updates). Remember to resize hda3 when restoring the image. Today I had to change a hard drive in a hurry as it was starting to bomb out. I used Acronis. It worked perfectly and automatically resized HDA3 to reflect the larger drive I was installing.