Topic: Can I do a "complete" backup of my E-smith server

[Scott Lewis]

Just done a clean install and added all the things I want to have on the server. Now, is there I can do a complete backup and then I can burn it to disk and then in future I can re-install from that.

Is this possible?

Scott

[guestHH]

Hi,

Use Norton Ghost. That make a COMPLETE snapshot. The backup feature is intended for system configs and data, not for snapshots.

Regards,
guestHH

[Dan Brown]

Other options would be mondo, mkCDRec, and the tape backup feature (though the standard restore option won't restore custom software).

[Devlyn Davis]

I haven't played with tape backup myself yet, but I have these questions:

For both the tape backup and 'backup to desktop' the docs suggest installing the system from scratch before running the restore.  What good is that process if it doesn't restore EVERYTHING.  I don't want to have to go back and reinstall all of the custom apps that I have loaded.  What a drag.  Is there a way to do a complete and total restore (aimed mostly at tape backup, not backup to desktop.)

Conversely, is there a way to restore just certain files from backup.  Most reasons users ask for a restore (not counting catastrophic events where the server melts down) is because they deleted a file that they shouldn't have, or one of their files have become corrupted.  I would not want to have to build the server all over again just to restore one file.

From what I've read, SME does a complete backup to tape every time, without the option of doing incrementals.  I would think it somewhat silly if you cannot bring the state of the system back 100% (ok, 99%) to it's previous state with a full backup.

Of course, like I said, I haven't yet had the opportunity to play with tape backup yet so my questions may end up being moot.

-Dev

[Dan Brown]

The tape backup backs up everything, but the restore doesn't restore everything.  There was some discussion on the devinfo mailing list a while back about how to implement some sort of "disaster recovery", though no definite solution was found.  One that looked good was to add the following to the end of the ks.cfg file on a reinstall floppy:

cd /
/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf 1
/usr/bin/flexbackup -extract
/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind

Haven't been able to try it thus far, though.

[Darrell May]

The default implementation of flexbackup performs a complete backup of both / and /boot.  Everything is on tape.

The default restore performs only a minumum restore of what the Mitel team considers the base system and user data.  To perform a complete restore or a selective restore you have two choices.

1) run flexbackup from the command line following this HowTo:

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/flexbackup-howto.html

2) install my server-manager restore panel

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/contrib/restorenow-0.0.1/

Regards,

Darrell