Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO

Charles Curley

           <charlescurley at charlescurley dot com>
        
Revision History                                                             
Revision 1.6           2004-04-29            Revised by: c^2                 
Added Knoppix notes, Syslinux, PPART, QtParted, some other rescue CDs, and   
made some fixes.                                                             
Revision 1.5           2003-12-19            Revised by: c^2                 
Fedora and GRUB notes.                                                       
Revision 1.4           2003-08-17            Revised by: c^2                 
Some notes on burning CD-ROMs, and more on files to exclude.                 
Revision 1.3           2003-04-24            Revised by: c^2                 
Substituted new email address and URL for old.                               
Revision 1.2           2003-02-12            Revised by: c^2                 
Added Red Hat 8.0 notes, support for FAT32, split the first stage restore    
scripts, and other minor changes. Notes on Amanda.                           
Revision 1.1           2002-09-10            Revised by: c^2                 
New code to handle ext3 partitions in make.fdisk, and a note on initrd.      
Revision 1.0           2002-07-24            Revised by: c^2                 
We now use bz2 compression in the first stage, have the run time option to   
check for bad blocks, and have a script that runs the entire first stage.    


Imagine your disk drive has just become a very expensive hockey puck. Imagine
you have had a fire, and your computer case now looks like something Salvador
Dal?? would like to paint. Now what?

Total restore, sometimes called bare metal recovery, is the process of
rebuilding a computer after a catastrophic failure. In order to make a total
restoration, you must have complete backups, not only of your file system,
but of partition information and other data. This HOWTO is a step-by-step
tutorial on how to back up a Linux computer so as to be able to make a bare
metal recovery, and how to make that bare metal recovery. It includes some
related scripts.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
    1.1. Copyright Information
    1.2. Disclaimers
    1.3. New Versions
    1.4. Credits
    1.5. Feedback
    1.6. Translations
   
   
2. Overview
    2.1. Limitations
   
   
3. Preparation
    3.1. Installing the ZIP Drive
   
   
4. Creating the Stage 1 Back Up
    4.1. Theme And Variations
   
   
5. First Stage Restore
    5.1. Booting tomsrtbt
    5.2. Restoration
   
   
6. Second Stage Restoration
7. Distribution Specific Notes
    7.1. Fedora
    7.2. Red Hat 9
    7.3. Red Hat 8.0
    7.4. Red Hat 7.1
    7.5. Red Hat 7.0
    7.6. Knoppix
   
   
8. Application Specific Notes
    8.1. GRUB
    8.2. Tripwire
    8.3. Squid
    8.4. Arkeia
    8.5. Amanda
   
   
9. Some Advice for Disaster Recovery
10. What Now?
    10.1. To Do
   
   
11. The Scripts
    11.1. First Stage
    11.2. Second Stage
    11.3. Backup Server Scripts
   
   
12. Resources
A. GNU Free Documentation License
    0. PREAMBLE
    1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
    2. VERBATIM COPYING
    3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
    4. MODIFICATIONS
    5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
    6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
    7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
    8. TRANSLATION
    9. TERMINATION
    10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
    11. How to use this License for your documents
   
   

1. Introduction

The normal bare metal restoration process is: install the operating system
from the product disks. Install the backup software, so you can restore your
data. Restore your data. Then you get to restore functionality by verifying
your configuration files, permissions, etc.

The process and scripts explained in this HOWTO will save re-installing the
operating system. The process explained here will restore only files that
were backed up from the production computer. Your configuration will be
intact when you restore the system, which should save you hours of verifying
configurations and data.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.1. Copyright Information

Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003 Charles Curley and distributed under the terms
of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) license, stated below.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of
the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation
License".

If you have any questions, please contact <linux-howto at metalab.unc.edu>.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.2. Disclaimers

No liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted by the
author, the [http://www.tldp.org/] Linux Documentation Project or anyone
else. Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk. There
may be errors and inaccuracies that may damage your system. Proceed with
caution, and, although errors are unlikely, the author take no responsibility
for them.

All copyrights are held by their by their respective owners, unless
specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be
regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major
installation and backups at regular intervals. In addition, you are strongly
recommended to use a sacrificial experimental computer when mucking with the
material, especially the scripts, in this HOWTO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.3. New Versions

You can find this document at its [http://www.charlescurley.com/
Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.html] home page or at the [http://
www.tldp.org/] Linux Documentation Project web site in many formats. Please
comment to <charlescurley at charlescurley dot com>

Depending on your browser, you may have to hold down the shift button while
you click on these in order to get them to download.

  * [http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.chunky.html.tar.bz2] bzip2
    compressed chunky (lots of small pages. Faster reading.) HTML.
   
  * [http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.smooth.html.tar.bz2] bzip2
    compressed smooth (one monster page -- no chunks. Easier to search.)
    HTML.
   
  * [http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.ps.bz2] bzip2 compressed
    postscript (US letter format).
   
  * [http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.pdf.bz2] bzip2 compressed PDF
    (US letter format).
   
  * [http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.txt.bz2] bzip2 compressed raw
    ASCII text.
   
  * Use the [http://www.charlescurley.com/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/
    Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.tar.bz2] source, Luke.
   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4. Credits

This document is derived from two articles originally published in Linux
Journal. My thanks to Linux Journal for reverting the rights to those
articles, thereby helping make this HOWTO possible.

Thanks to Joy Y Goodreau for excellent HOWTO editing, and to David Palomares
for correcting the spelling of Salvador Dal??'s name.

Also, thanks to [mailto:pon at iki dot fi] Pasi Oja-Nisula for a bug fix and
information on [http://www.knoppix.org/] Knoppix.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.5. Feedback

Feedback is most certainly welcome for this document. Without your
corrections, suggestions and other input, this document wouldn't exist.
Please send your additions, comments and criticisms to me at: <charlescurley
at charlescurley dot com>.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.6. Translations

Not everyone speaks English. Volunteers are welcome.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Overview

The process shown below is not easy, and can be hazardous to your data.
Practice it before you need it! Do as I did, and practice on a sacrificial
computer!

The target computer for this HOWTO is a Pentium computer. Originally, it had
a [http://www.redhat.com] Red Hat 7.1 Linux server or workstation
installation on one IDE hard drive. Since then, it has been ugraded to Red
Hat 8.0 and [http://fedora.redhat.com/] Fedora Core 1. The target computer
does not have vast amounts of data because the computer was set up as a 
"sacrificial" test bed. That is, I did not want to test this process with a
production computer and production data. Also, I did a fresh installation
before I started the testing so that I could always re-install if I needed to
revert to a known configuration.

Note NOTE                                                                    
     The sample commands will show, in most cases, what I had to type to     
     recover the target system. You may have to use similar commands, but    
     with different parameters. It is up to you to be sure you duplicate your
     setup, and not the test computer's setup.                               

The basic procedure is set out in W. Curtis Preston, Unix Backup & Recovery,
O'Reilly & Associates, 1999, which I have favorably reviewed in Linux Journal
. However, the book is a bit thin on specific, real-time questions. For
example, exactly which files do you back up? What metadata should you
preserve, and how?

Before beginning the process set forth in this HOWTO you will need to back up
your system with a typical backup tool such as Amanda, BRU??, tar, Arkeia® or
cpio. The question, then, is how to get from toasted hardware to the point
where you can run the restoration tool that will restore your data.

Users of Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) based Linux distributions should also
save RPM metadata as part of their normal backups. Something like:
bash# rpm -Va > /etc/rpmVa.txt                                               

in your backup script will give you a basis for comparison after a bare metal
restoration.

To get to this point, must have:

  * Your hardware up and running again, with replacement components as
    needed. The BIOS should be correctly configured, including time and date,
    and hard drive parameters. At the moment, there is no provision for using
    a different hard drive.
   
  * A parallel port Iomega® ZIP® drive or equivalent. You will need at least
    30 MB of space.
   
  * Your backup media.
   
  * A minimal Linux system that will allow you to run the restoration
    software.
   

To get there, you need at least two stages of backup, and possibly three.
Exactly what you back up and in which stage you back it up is determined by
your restoration process. For example, if you are restoring a tape server,
you may not need networking during the restoration process. So only back up
networking in your regular backups.

You will restore in stages as well. In stage one, we build partitions, file
systems, etc. and restore a minimum of files from the ZIP disk. The goal of
stage one is to be able to boot to a running computer with a network
connection, tape drives, restoration software, or whatever we need for stage
two.

The second stage, if it is necessary, consists of restoring backup software
and any relevant databases. For example, suppose you use Arkeia and you are
building a bare metal recovery ZIP disk for your backup server. Arkeia keeps
a huge database on the server's hard drives. You can recover the database
from the tapes, if you want. Instead, why not tar and gzip the whole arkeia
directory (at /usr/knox), and save that to another computer over nfs or ssh?
Stage one, as we have defined it below, does not include X, so you will have
some experimenting to do if you wish to back up X as well as your backup
program. Some restore programs require X.

Of course, if you are using some other backup program, you may have some
detective work to do to. You will have to find out the directories and files
it needs to run. If you use tar, gzip, cpio, mt or dd for your backup and
recovery tools, they will be saved to and restored from our ZIP disk as part
of the stage one process describe below.

The last stage is a total restoration from tape or other media. After you
have done that last stage, you should be able to boot to a fully restored and
operational system.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.1. Limitations

This HOWTO is restricted to making a minimal backup such that, having then
restored that backup to new hardware ("bare metal"), you can then use your
regular backups to restore a completely working system. This HOWTO does not
deal with your regular backups at all.

Even within that narrow brief, this HOWTO is not exhaustive. You still have
some research, script editing, and testing to do.

The scripts here restore the partition data exactly as found on the source
hard drive. This is nice if you are restoring on an identical computer or at
least and identical hard drive, but that is often not the case. For now,
there are two remedies (which will make more sense after you've read the rest
of the HOWTO):

  * Edit the partition table input file. I've done that a few times. You can
    also do this to add new partitions or delete existing ones (but edit the
    scripts that use the partition table input file as well).
   
  * Hand build a new partition table and go from there. That is one reason
    why restore.metadata does not call the hard drive rebuilding script. Use
    the rebuilding script.
   

The scripts shown here only handle ext2fs, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. Until some
eager volunteer supplies code for doing so in these scripts, you will need
other tools for backing up and restoring file systems we haven't covered.
[http://www.partimage.org/] Partition Image looks like a useful candidate
here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Preparation

Note WARNING                                                                 
     Do your normal backups on their regular schedule. This HOWTO is useless 
     if you don't do that.                                                   

Build yourself a rescue disk. I use [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt. It is
well documented and packs a lot of useful tools onto one floppy diskette.
There is an active list for it, and the few questions I've had were quickly
and accurately answered. I like that in a product my shop may depend on one
day.

Next, figure out how to do the operating system backup you will need so that
you can restore your normal backup. I followed Preston's advice and used an
Iomega parallel port ZIP drive. The drives get approximately 90 MB of useful
storage to a disk. I need about 85 MB to back up my desktop, so a 100MB ZIP
drive may be pushing your luck.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

3.1. Installing the ZIP Drive

Installing the ZIP drive is covered in the [http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/
ZIP-Drive.html] ZIP Drive HOWTO, available at [http://www.tldp.org/] the
Linux Documentation Project and at its home page, [http://www.njtcom.com/
dansie/zip-drive.html] http://www.njtcom.com/dansie/zip-drive.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Creating the Stage 1 Back Up

Having made your production backups, you need to preserve your partition
information so that you can rebuild your partitions.

The script make.fdisk scans a hard drive for partition information, and saves
it in three files. The first is an executable script, called make.dev.x
(where "x" is the name of the device file, e.g. hda). Second is mount.dev.x,
which creates mount points and mounts the newly created partitions on them.
The last, dev.x, is the commands necessary for fdisk to build the partitions.
You specify which hard drive you want to build scripts for (and thus the file
names) by naming the associated device file as the argument to make.fdisk.
For example, on a typical IDE system,
bash# make.fdisk /dev/hda                                                    

spits out the scripts make.dev.hda, mount.dev.hda and the input file for 
fdisk, dev.hda.

In addition, if make.fdisk encounters a FAT partition, it preserves the
partition's boot sector in a file named dev.xy, where x is the drive's device
name (e.g. sdc, hda) and y is the partition number. The boot sector is the
first sector, 512 bytes, of the partition. This sector is restored at the
same time the partitions are rebuilt, in the script make.dev.hda

Fortunately, the price of hard drives is plummeting almost as fast as the
public's trust in politicians after an election. So it is good that the
output files are text, and allow hand editing. That's the most difficult but
most flexible way to rebuild on a larger replacement drive. (See the To Do
list.)

Other metadata are preserved in the script save.metadata. The script saves
the partition information in the file fdisk.hda in the root of the ZIP disk.
It is a good idea to print this file and your /etc/fstab so that you have
hard copy should you ever have to restore the partition data manually. You
can save a tree by toggling between two virtual consoles, running fdisk in
one and catting /etc/fstab or /fdisk.hda as needed. However, doing so is
error prone.

You will also want to preserve files relevant to your restoration method. For
example, if you use nfs to save your data, you will need to preserve
hosts.allow, hosts.deny, exports, etc. Also, if you are using any
network-backed restoration process, such as Amanda or Quick Restore, you will
need to preserve networking files like HOSTNAME, hosts, etc. and the relevant
software tree.

The simplest way to handle these and similar questions is to preserve the
entire etc directory.

There is no way a 100 MB ZIP drive is going to hold a server installation of
a modern distribution of Linux. We have to be much more selective than simply
preserving the whole kazoo. What files do we need?

  * The boot directory.
   
  * The /etc directory and subdirectories.
   
  * Directories needed at boot time.
   
  * Device files in /dev.
   

To determine the directories needed at boot, we look at the boot
initialization file /etc/rc.sysinit. It sets its own path like so:
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin                                           
export PATH                                                                  

Trial and error indicated that we needed some other directories as well, such
as /dev. In Linux, you can't do much without device files.

In reading the script save.metadata, note that we aren't necessarily saving
files that are called with absolute paths.

We may require several iterations of back up, test the bare metal restore,
re-install from CD and try again, before we have a working backup script.
While I worked on this HOWTO, I made five such iterations before I had a
successful restoration. That is one reason why it is essential to use scripts
whenever possible. Test thoroughly!

One thing you can do on an RPM based system is use the rpm program to
determine which files are where. For example, to get a complete list of the
files used by the openssh package, run:
bash# rpm -ql openssh                                                        

There are some things you don't need, like the man pages. You can inspect
each one and decide whether to back it up or not.

Note WARNING                                                                 
     The second stage of restoration is run without overwriting previously   
     restored files. This means that the files restored in the first stage   
     are the ones that will be used after full restoration. So update your   
     bare metal backups whenever you update files in these directories!      

Note WARNING                                                                 
     The version of tar included in [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt does   
     not preserve ownership when it restores. This may cause problems for    
     applications like Amanda. A backup and restoration tool, Amanda has     
     several directories owned by its own eponymous user. The solution is:   
                                                                             
       * Note which directories and files are not owned by root.             
                                                                             
       * Note their owners.                                                  
                                                                             
       * Arrange to set the ownership correctly as part of the restoration   
         process. E.g:                                                       
                                                                             
         bash# chown -R amanda:disk /var/lib/amanda                          
                                                                             
         You can also add that line to your scripts for second state         
         restoration, such as restore.tester.                                
                                                                             
                                                                             
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.1. Theme And Variations

4.1.1. No ZIP drive

This backup process requires you to have the ZIP disk drive present at each
backup. You could create the ZIP disk's contents in a directory, and back
that up over the net. Then you only need to build a ZIP disk (with cp -rp) on
the backup server when you need to restore.

The backup process will be faster, but you should check that the resulting
directory will fit on your ZIP disk (with du -hs $target.zip)! You will have
to edit the definition of the variable zip in save.metadata.

My laptop has problems running both a network card and a ZIP drive, so this
is the process I use to back it up. I keep a backup image as well as the
current one, so that I have a fallback in case the computer crashes during a
backup.

Alternatively, you could build several ZIP disks' worth of backup on the hard
drive, and feed them to the system on restore.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.1.2. CD-ROM

This is similar to the no ZIP drive option above. Save your backups to a
directory on your hard drive, as noted. Then use mkisofs to create an ISO
9660 image from that directory, and burn it.

These days many computers come with a CD-ROM drive but no floppy diskette.
And floppy drives do fail. So it's a good idea to burn your CD-ROM with a
bootable image on it. The bad news is that the "El Torito" format supports
1.2 MB, 1.44 MB and 2.88 MB floppies, and [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt
uses a 1.7 MB floppy. The good news is that you can get a 2.88 MB version,
tomsrtbt-2.0.103.ElTorito.288.img, from the same mirrors where you get the
floppy image. Place a copy[1] in the root directory of the backup files. Then
use the mkisofs command line option -b to specify
tomsrtbt-2.0.103.ElTorito.288.img as the boot image file.

The only down side of this process is that many older BIOSes do not support
2.88 MB floppy images on CD-ROMs. Most of those will boot to a [http://
www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt floppy.

An alternative is to use [http://syslinux.zytor.com/] Syslinux. It is not
dependent on a floppy diskette image, and you can build your own CD with a
number of tools, such as [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt, on it.

You may have to adjust the BIOS options to allow the computer to boot to
CD-ROM drive.

Test your CDs on the drive you will use at restoration time. If you find you
need to hack the scripts, you can copy them to /tmp, a RAM disk under [http:/
/www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt, and edit them there. The scripts will run there.
As a RAM disk is volatile, be sure to save your changes before you reboot!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.1.3. Multiple ZIP disks

By splitting up the two first stage scripts, restore.metadata and 
save.metadata, you could spread the first stage metadata across multiple ZIP
disks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.1.4. Excluding From First Stage Saving

There are time when you need to squeeze a few megabytes from the first stage
data, especially when you are pushing the limit of your ZIP disk. The
function crunch in the script save.metadata takes multiple parameters to feed
to tar. It can also take the --exclude parameter. So, for example, you can
exclude the samba and X11 directories under /etc like so:
crunch etc etc --exclude etc/samba --exclude etc/X11                         

Why those two? Because they're hard drive space hogs and we don't need them
at boot time.

If you keep multiple kernels around, you can eliminate the modules for all of
the kernels you won't boot to. Check your lilo.conf or grub.confto see which
kernel you will use, and then check /lib/modules for module directories you
can exclude.

How to find more good candidates for exclusion? List the target directories
with ls -alSr for individual files, and du | sort -n for directories.

Another (probably neater) way to exclude directories is to put a complete
list of directories into a file, then refer to it via the tar option
--exclude-from=FILENAME.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.1.5. Initrd

If your system uses an initial RAM disk, or initrd, to boot, make sure that 
restore.metadata creates the directory /initrd. The easiest way to do this is
to ensure that it is included in the list of directories used in the
directory creating loop toward the end.

Your system will probably use an initrd if it boots from a SCSI drive or has
root on an ext3fs partition. Check /etc/lilo.conf to see if it calls for one.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

5. First Stage Restore

5.1. Booting tomsrtbt

The first thing to do before starting the restoration process is to verify
that the hardware time is set correctly. Use the BIOS setup for this. How
close to exact you have to set the time depends on your applications. For
restoration, within a few minutes of exact time should be accurate enough.
This will allow time-critical events to pick up where they left off when you
finally launch the restored system.

Before booting [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt, make sure your ZIP drive is
installed on a parallel port, either /dev/lp0 or /dev/lp1. The start-up
software will load the parallel port ZIP drive driver for you.

The next step is to set the video mode. I usually like to see as much on the
screen as I can. When the option to select a video mode comes, I use mode 6,
80 columns by 60 lines. Your hardware may or may not be able to handle high
resolutions like that, so experiment with it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

5.2. Restoration

Once [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt has booted and you have a console,
mount the ZIP drive. It is probably a good idea to mount it read only:
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt -o ro                                                 

Check to be sure it is there:
# ls -l /mnt                                                                 

At this point, you can run the restoration automatically or manually. Use the
automated restore if you don't need to make any changes as you go along.

One consideration here is whether you have multiple hard drives. If your
Linux installation mounts partitions on multiple hard drives, you must mount
the root partition first. This is to ensure that mount point directories are
created on the partition where they belong. The script first.stage will run
the scripts to mount the drives in the order in which they are created. If
you have created them (in the script save.metadata) in the order in which
they cascade from root, the mounting process should work just fine.

If you have multiple hard drives, and they cross-mount, you are on your own.
Either combine and edit the scripts to mount them in the correct order, or do
it manually.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

5.2.1. Automated

The automatic process calls each of the manual scripts in proper order. It
does not allow for manual intervention, say for creating file systems that
this HOWTO does not support. To run the first stage restore automatically,
enter the command:
# /mnt/root.bin/first.stage                                                  

If you want to check for back blocks, add the -c option.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

5.2.2. Manually

To run the process manually, change to the directory where the scripts are on
the ZIP drive.
# cd /mnt/root.bin                                                           

Now run the script(s) that will restore the partition information and create
file systems. You may run them in any order. e.g.:
# ./make.dev.hda                                                             

If you want to check for back blocks, add the -c option.

This script will:

  * Clean out the first 1024 bytes of the hard drive, killing off any
    existing partition table and master boot record (MBR).
   
  * Recreate the partitions from the information gathered when you ran 
    make.fdisk.
   
  * Make ext2 and ext3 file system partitions and Linux swap partitions as
    appropriate. If you provide the -c option to the script, it will also
    check for bad blocks.
   
  * Make some types of FAT partitions.
   

Note NOTE                                                                    
     If you have other operating systems to restore, now is a good time to do
     so. When you've done that, reboot to [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt  
     and continue restoring Linux.                                           

Now run the script(s) that create mount points and mount the partitions to
them.
# ./mount.dev.hda                                                            

Once you have created all your directories and mounted partitions to them,
you can run the script restore.metadata. This will restore the contents of
the ZIP drive to the hard drive.

You should see a directory of the ZIP disk's root directory, then a list of
the archive files as they are restored. Tar on [http://www.toms.net/rb]
tomsrtbt will tell you that tar's block size is 20, and that's fine. You can
ignore it. Be sure that lilo prints out its results:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Added linux *                                                              |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

That will be followed by the output from a "df -m" command.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

5.2.3. Finishing Touches

If you normally boot directly to X, you could have some problems. To be safe,
change your boot run level temporarily. In /target/etc/inittab, find the line
that looks like this:
id:5:initdefault:                                                            

and change it to this:
id:3:initdefault:                                                            

Now, you can gracefully reboot. Remove the [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt
floppy from your floppy drive if you haven't already done so, and give the
computer the three fingered salute, or its equivalent:
# reboot                                                                     

The computer will shut down and reboot.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

6. Second Stage Restoration

As the computer reboots, go back to the BIOS and verify that the clock is
more or less correct.

Once you have verified the clock is correct, exit the BIOS and reboot to the
hard drive. You can simply let the computer boot in its normal sequence. You
will see a lot of error messages, mostly along the lines of "I can't find
blah! Waahhh!" If you have done your homework correctly up until now, those
error messages won't matter. You don't need linuxconf or apache to do what
you need to do.

Note NOTE                                                                    
     As an alternative, you can boot to single user mode (at the lilo prompt,
     enter linux single), but you will have to configure your network        
     manually and fire up sshd or whatever daemons you need to restore your  
     system. How you do those things is very system specific.                

You should be able to log into a root console (no X -- no users, sorry). You
should now be able to use the network, for example to nfs mount the backup of
your system.

If you did the two stage backup I suggested for Arkeia, you can now restore
Arkeia's database and executables. You should be able to run
/etc/rc.d/init.d/arkeia start                                                

and start the server. If you have the GUI installed on another computer with
X installed, you should now be able to log in to Arkeia on your tape server,
and prepare your restoration.

Note NOTE                                                                    
     When you restore, read the documentation for your restoration programs  
     carefully. For example, tar does not normally restore certain           
     characteristics of files, like suid bits. File permissions are set by   
     the user's umask. To restore your files exactly as you saved them, use  
     tar's p option. Similarly, make sure your restoration software will     
     restore everything exactly as you saved it.                             

To restore the test computer:
bash# restore.all                                                            

If you used tar for your backup and restoration, and used the -k (keep old
files, don't overwrite) option, you will see a lot of this:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|tar: usr/sbin/rpcinfo: Could not create file: File exists                  |
|tar: usr/sbin/zdump: Could not create file: File exists                    |
|tar: usr/sbin/zic: Could not create file: File exists                      |
|tar: usr/sbin/ab: Could not create file: File exists                       |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

This is normal, as tar is refusing to overwrite files you restored during the
first stage of restoration.

Then reboot. On the way down, you will see a lot of error messages, such as 
"no such pid." This is a normal part of the process. The shutdown code is
using the pid files from daemons that were running when the backup was made
to shut down daemons that were not started on the last boot. Of course
there's no such pid.

Your system should come up normally, with a lot fewer errors than it had
before; ideally no errors. The acid test of how well your restore works on an
RPM based system is to verify all packages:
bash# rpm -Va                                                                

If you get error messages about prelinking, you may want to run the command /
etc/cron.daily/prelink to remove them.

Some files, such as configuration and log files, will have changed in the
normal course of things, and you should be able to mentally filter those out
of the report. You can redirect the output to a file, and diff it against the
one that was made at backup time (/etc/rpmVa.txt), thereby speeding up this
step considerably. Emacs users should check out its diff facilities.

Now you should be up and running. It is time to test your applications,
especially those that run as daemons. The more sophisticated the application,
the more testing you may need to do. If you have remote users, disable them
from using the system, or make it "read only" while you test it. This is
especially important for databases, to prevent making any corruption or data
loss worse than it already might be.

If you normally boot to X, and disabled it above, test X before you re-enable
it. Re-enable it by changing that one line in /etc/inittab back to:
id:5:initdefault:                                                            

You should now be ready for rock and roll -- and some aspirin and a couch.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

7. Distribution Specific Notes

Below are distribution notes from past experiences. If you have additional
notes that you would like to add for other distributions, please forward them
to me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

7.1. Fedora

[http://fedora.redhat.com/] Fedora is the sequel to Red Hat 9. Make the
following changes:

  * Fedora uses grub, not lilo. Make those changes.
   
  * We no longer need to save kerberos libraries separately, as in Red Hat
    8.0. Remove or comment out that line of save.metadata:
    # RH8. Fedora 1 puts them in /lib                                
    # crunch kerberos usr/kerberos/lib/                              
   
  * The names of the libraries we need to save for SSH's benefit have
    changed. Also in save.metadata:
    # save these so we can use ssh for restore. *crack* for RH 7.0 login                       
    # authentication.                                                                          
    # RH 8.0                                                                                   
    # crunch usr.lib usr/lib/*crack* usr/lib/libz* usr/lib/libssl* usr/lib/libcrypto*          
    # Fedora 1                                                                                 
    crunch usr.lib usr/lib/*crack* usr/lib/libz* usr/lib/libwrap* usr/lib/libk* usr/lib/libgss*
   
  * In restore.metadata, we have more directories to rebuild.
    # If you boot via an initrd, make sure you build a directory here so           
    # the kernel can mount the initrd at boot. tmp/.font-unix is for the           
    # xfs font server.                                                             
                                                                                   
    for dir in mnt/save mnt/zip mnt/cdrom mnt/floppy mnt/imports mnt/dosc mnt/nfs\ 
     proc initrd tmp/.font-unix var/empty/sshd var/lock/subsys var/log; do         
   
    And some modes to set:
    chmod a-w $target/proc          # Restore /proc's read-only permissions       
                                                                                  
    # Set modes                                                                   
    chmod 0111 $target/var/empty/sshd                                             
    chmod 0775 $target/var/lock                                                   
                                                                                  
    # For Fedora. First two for xfs.                                              
    chroot $target chown xfs:xfs /tmp/.font-unix                                  
    chmod 1777 $target/tmp/.font-unix # set the sticky bit.                       
    chmod 1777 $target/tmp                                                        
   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.2. Red Hat 9

I haven't worked with Red Hat 9. Comments on Fedora may also apply to Red Hat
9.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

7.3. Red Hat 8.0

Red Hat 8.0 requires changes only if you log in via ssh to your computer
after the first stage restore. If, say, you perform the second state restore
over ssh. If so, make the following changes:

  * In the file save.metadata, add the kerberos libraries to the first stage
    backup.
    crunch  kerberos usr/kerberos/lib/                               
   
  * In the file restore.metadata, there is a loop that builds several
    directories. First, add these two directory names to the list: /var/empty
    /sshd and /var/lock/subsys. As Red Hat 8.0 defaults to ext3fs, it
    requires an initial RAM disk at boot time. So make sure initrd is in the
    list. Then, if it isn't already there, add the -p switch to the mkdir
    command.
   
    The directory /var/lock/subsys is owned by group lock, so change its
    owner.
    chroot $target /bin/chown root:lock /var/lock                    
   
    Finally, usr/lib/libcrypto* has gone away, so you can remove that from
    the line that crunches usr/lib.
   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.4. Red Hat 7.1

This distribution is the one I used originally on my test computer. I have
had no problems with it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

7.5. Red Hat 7.0

This version seems to require libcrack (in /usr/lib) and its attendant files
in order to authenticate users. So in save.metadata, add to the line that
saves /usr/lib the following: /usr/lib/*crack* and enable that line.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

7.6. Knoppix

I have not used [http://www.knoppix.org/] Knoppix, but other folks have.
[mailto:pon at iki dot fi] Pasi Oja-Nisula reports:

   
    For me the best thing about using Knoppix is that I don't need a specific
    boot medium for each machine, but I can use the same tools all the time.
    And hardware support in Knoppix is really great. I don't have that much
    experience with different platforms, but all the machines I've tried have
    worked fine, scsi drivers are found and so on.
   
    I'm doing this recovery thing by copying the backups over the network to
    other machine. The restore involves booting the Knoppix cd, fetching the
    metadata.tar.gz from the network machine. Then make.dev, mount.dev,
    fetching the other tar.gz files, grub and reboot. Some typing involved
    but thanks to your scripts it's quite straighforward. Unless changing
    from ide to scsi or something, but even then it's not that difficult,
    since Linux is easy to restore to different hardware.
   
Also see "System recovery with Knoppix".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

8. Application Specific Notes

Here are some notes about backing up particular applications.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

8.1. GRUB

The default bootloader in Fedora is the [http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/]
Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB). It has to run at the end of the first stage,
or you won't be able to boot thereafter. To preserve it for first stage
restoration, make the following changes:

  * Edit the penultimate stanza of restore.metadata:
    # Now install the boot sector.                                   
    # chroot $target /sbin/lilo -C /etc/lilo.conf                    
    chroot $target /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda                       
   
  * Add the following stanza to save.metadata:
    # Grub requires these at installation time.                      
    crunch usr.share.grub usr/share/grub                             
   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.2. Tripwire

If you run Tripwire or any other application that maintains a database of
file metadata, rebuild that database immediately after restoring.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

8.3. Squid

Squid is a HTTP proxy and cache. As such it keeps a lot of temporary data on
the hard drive. There is no point in backing that up. Insert "--exclude /var/
spool/squid" into the appropriate tar command in your second stage backup
script. Then, get squid to rebuild its directory structure for you. Tack onto
the tail end of the second stage restore script a command for squid to
initialize itself. Here is how I did it over ssh in restore.tester:
ssh $target "mkdir /var/spool/squid ; chown squid:squid /var/spool/squid;\   
      /usr/sbin/squid -z;touch /var/spool/squid/.OPB_NOBACKUP"               

The last command creates a file of length 0 called .OPB_NOBACKUP. This is for
the benefit of Arkeia, and tells Arkeia not to back up below this directory
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

8.4. Arkeia

These notes are based on testing with Arkeia 4.2.

[http://www.arkeia.com/] Arkeia is a backup and restore program that runs on
a wide variety of platforms. You can use Arkeia as part of a bare metal
restoration scheme, but there are two caveats.

The first is probably the most problematic, as absent any more elegant
solution you have to hand select the directories to restore in the navigator
at restoration time. The reason is that, apparently, Arkeia has no mechanism
for not restoring files already present on the disk, nothing analogous to tar
's -p option. If you simply allow a full restore, the restore will crash as
Arkeia over-writes a library which is in use at restore time, e.g. lib/
libc-2.1.1.so. Hand selection of directories to restore is at best dicey, so
I recommend against it.

The second caveat is that you have to back up the Arkeia data dictionary and/
or programs. To do that, modify the save.metatdata script by adding Arkeia to
the list of directories to save:
# arkeia specific:                                                           
tar cf - usr/knox | gzip -c > $zip/arkeia.tar.gz                             

You must back up the data dictionary this way because Arkeia does not back up
the data dictionary. This is one of my complaints about Arkeia, and I solve
it on my own computer by saving the data dictionary to tape with [http://
www.estinc.com/] The TOLIS Group's BRU.

The data dictionary will be restored in the script restore.metadata
automatically.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

8.5. Amanda

[http://www.amanda.org/] Amanda (The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk
Archiver) works quite well with this set of scripts. Use the normal Amanda
back-up process, and build your first stage data as usual. Amanda stores the
data on tape in GNU tar or cpio format, and you can recover from individual
files to entire backup images. The nice thing about recovering entire images
is that you can then use variants on the scripts in this HOWTO to restore
from the images, or direct from tape. I was able to restore my test machine
with the directions from W. Curtis Preston's Unix Backup & Recovery. For more
information on it, see the Resources. The Amanda chapter from the book is
[http://www.backupcentral.com/amanda.html] on line.

I made two changes to the script restore.tester. First, I changed it to
accept a file name as an argument. Then, since Amanda's amrestore
decompresses the data as it restores it, I rewrote it to cat the file into
the pipe instead of decompressing it.

The resulting line looks like this:
cat $file | ssh $target "umask 000 ; cd / ; tar -xpkf - "                    

where $file is the script's argument, the image recovered from the tape by 
amrestore.

Since the command line arguments to tar prohibit over-writing, restore from
images in the reverse of the order in which they were made. Restore most
recent first.

Amanda does require setting ownership by hand if you back up the amanda data
directory with save.metadata. Something like:
bash# chown -R amanda:disk /var/lib/amanda                                   

You can also add that line to your scripts for second state restoration, such
as restore.tester.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

9. Some Advice for Disaster Recovery

You should take your ZIP disk for each computer and the printouts you made,
and place them in a secure location in your shop. You should store copies of
these in your off-site backup storage location. The major purpose of off-site
backup storage is to enable disaster recovery, and restoring each host onto
replacement hardware is a part of disaster recovery.

You should also have several [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt floppies and
possibly some ZIP drives in your off-site storage as well. Also, have copies
of the [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt distribution on several of your
computers so that they back each other up.

You should probably have copies of this HOWTO, with your site-specific
annotations on it, with your backups and in your off-site backup storage.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

10. What Now?

This HOWTO results from experiments on one computer. No doubt you will find
some directories or files you need to back up in your first stage backup. I
have not dealt with saving and restoring X on the first stage, nor have I
touched at all on processors other than Intel.

I would appreciate your feedback as you test and improve these scripts on
your own computers. I also encourage vendors of backup software to document
how to do a minimal backup of their products. I'd like to see the whole Linux
community sleep just a little better at night.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

10.1. To Do

Volunteers are most welcome. Check with me before you start on one of these
in case someone else is working on it already.

  * A partition editor to adjust partition boundaries in the dev.hdx file.
    This will let users adjust partitions for a different hard drive, or the
    same one with different geometry, or to adjust partition sizes within the
    same hard drive. A GUI would probably be a good idea here. On the other
    tentacle, the FSF's parted looks like it will fill part of the bill. It
    does re-size existing partitions, but with restrictions.
   
  * make.fdisk currently only recognizes some FAT partitions, not all. Add
    code to make.fdisk to recognize others and make appropriate instructions
    to rebuild them in the output files.
   
  * For FAT12 or FAT16 partitions we do not format, write zeros into the
    partition so that Mess-DOS 6.x does not get confused. See the notes on 
    fdisk for an explanation of the problem.
   
  * Make a script for putting ext2/3 file systems on ZIP disks.
   
  * Translations into other (human) languages.
   
  * Find out how loadlin or similar programs affect this process.
   
  * I've referred to Red Hat Package Manager (rpm) from time to time. What
    are the equivalent deb commands?
   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. The Scripts

See the notes in the beginning of each script for a summary of what it does.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1. First Stage

11.1.1. make.fdisk

This script, run at backup time, creates scripts similar to make.dev.hda and 
mount.dev.x, below, for you to run at restore time. It also produces data
files similar to dev.hda, below. The name of the script and data file
produced depends on the device given this script as a a parameter. That
script, run at restore time, builds the partitions on the hard drive.
make.fdisk is called from save.metadata, below.
#! /usr/bin/perl                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# A perl script to create a script and input file for fdisk to                                         
# re-create the partitions on the hard disk, and format the Linux and                                  
# Linux swap partitions. The first parameter is the fully qualified                                    
# path of the device of the hard disk, e.g. /dev/hda. The two                                          
# resulting files are the script make.dev.x and the data file dev.x                                    
# (where x is the hard drive described, e.g. hda, sdc). make.dev.x is                                  
# run at restore time to rebuild hard drive x, prior to running                                        
# restore.metadata. dev.x is the input file for fdisk.                                                 
                                                                                                       
# Time-stamp: <2004-04-10 13:51:37 root make.fdisk>                                                    
                                                                                                       
# Copyright 2001 through the last date of modification Charles Curley                                  
# except for the subroutine cut2fmt.                                                                   
                                                                                                       
# cut2fmt Copyright (c) 1998 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington and                                   
# O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.  Permission is granted to use this code                                  
# freely EXCEPT for book publication.  You may use this code for book                                  
# publication only with the explicit permission of O'Reilly &                                          
# Associates, Inc.                                                                                     
                                                                                                       
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it                              
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the                                
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your                               
# option) any later version.                                                                           
                                                                                                       
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but                                  
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                                           
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU                                    
# General Public License for more details.                                                             
                                                                                                       
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along                              
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,                              
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                                                
                                                                                                       
# In addition, as a special exception, Tom Christiansen, Nathan                                        
# Torkington and O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.  give permission to use                                   
# the code of this program with the subroutine cut2fmt (or with                                        
# modified versions of the subroutine cut2fmt that use the same                                        
# license as the subroutine cut2fmt), and distribute linked                                            
# combinations including the two.  You must obey the GNU General                                       
# Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than                                   
# the subroutine cut2fmt.  If you modify this file, you may extend                                     
# this exception to your version of the file, but you are not                                          
# obligated to do so.  If you do not wish to do so, delete this                                        
# exception statement and the subroutine cut2fmt from your version.                                    
                                                                                                       
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at                                                 
# http://www.fsf.org/                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
# Changes:                                                                                             
                                                                                                       
# 2004 04 10: fdisk v > 2.11 has wider columns. Added code to select                                   
# the appropriate cut string based on fdisk's version.                                                 
                                                                                                       
# 2004 04 09: Added support for Mandrake's idea of devfs. On Mandrake,                                 
# everything is mounted with devfs. So the mount devices are buried                                    
# deep in places like /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 instead                                   
# of places like /dev/hda1, where $DEITY intended they should be. We                                   
# have to reverse from the long devfs device to the shorter old style                                  
# that tomsrtbt uses. The alternative is to keep track in an array of                                  
# which devfs device belongs to which short device.                                                    
                                                                                                       
# 2003 12 29: Changed the regex for detecting whether a file system is                                 
# read-write in the code that builds the mount file(s). The old test                                   
# does not work if mount returns multiple parameters in the 5th field,                                 
# e.g. (rw,errors=remount-ro) on some debian systems. This regex                                       
# assumes that the rw parameter is always listed first, which may not                                  
# always be the case. If it fails, take out the '\('. Thanks to Pasi                                   
# Oja-Nisula <pon at iki dot fi> for pointing this out.                                                
                                                                                                       
# 2003 01 09: Added support for FAT32. We now create two scripts for                                   
# each hard drive, make.dev.[as]dx and mount.dev.[as]dx. These create                                  
# and make file systems on each partition, and make mount points and                                   
# mount them.                                                                                          
                                                                                                       
# 2002 12 25: added support to handle W95 extended (LBA) (f) and W95                                   
# FAT 32 partitions. I have tested this for primary but not logical                                    
# partitions.                                                                                          
                                                                                                       
# 2002 09 08: Added minimal support for ext3fs. We now detect mounted                                  
# ext3fs partitions & rebuild but with no options. The detection                                       
# depends on the command line "dumpe2fs <device> 2>/dev/null | grep -i                                 
# journal" producing no output for an ext2fs, and output (we don't                                     
# care what) for an ext3fs.                                                                            
                                                                                                       
# This could stand extension to support non-default ext3 options such                                  
# as the type of journaling. Volunteers?                                                               
                                                                                                       
# 2002 07 25: Bad block checking is now a command line option (-c) at                                  
# the time the product script is run.                                                                  
                                                                                                       
# 2002 07 03: Corrected the mechanism for specifying the default                                       
# drive.                                                                                               
                                                                                                       
# 2001 11 25: Changed the way mke2fs gets its bad block                                                
# list. badblocks does not guess at the block size, so you have to get                                 
# it (from dumpe2fs) and feed it to badblocks. It is simpler to just                                   
# have mke2fs call badblocks, but you do loose the ability to have a                                   
# writing test easily. -- C^2                                                                          
                                                                                                       
# 2001 11 25: Changed the regex that extracts partition labels from                                    
# the mount command. This change does not affect the results at all,                                   
# it just makes it possible to use Emacs' perl mode to indent                                          
# correctly. I just escaped the left bracket in the regex. -- C^2                                      
                                                                                                       
# Discussion:                                                                                          
                                                                                                       
# fdisk will spit out a file of the form below if you run it as "fdisk                                 
# -l".                                                                                                 
                                                                                                       
# root@tester ~/bin $ fdisk -l /dev/hda                                                                
                                                                                                       
# Disk /dev/hda: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 1023 cylinders                                                  
# Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes                                                                
                                                                                                       
#    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System                                             
# /dev/hda1             1         9     18112+  83  Linux                                              
# /dev/hda2            10      1023   2044224    5  Extended                                           
# /dev/hda5            10       368    723712+  83  Linux                                              
# /dev/hda6           369       727    723712+  83  Linux                                              
# /dev/hda7           728       858    264064+  83  Linux                                              
# /dev/hda8           859       989    264064+  83  Linux                                              
# /dev/hda9           990      1022     66496+  82  Linux swap                                         
                                                                                                       
# What fdisk does not do is provide output suitable for later                                          
# importing into fdisk, a la sfdisk. This script parses the output                                     
# from fdisk and creates an input file for fdisk. Use the input file                                   
# like so:                                                                                             
                                                                                                       
# fdisk /dev/hdx < dev.hdx                                                                             
                                                                                                       
# For the bare metal restore package, this script also builds a script                                 
# that will execute the above command so you can run it from your zip                                  
# disk. Because the bare metal restore scripts all are in /root/bin,                                   
# the data file and script created by this script are also placed                                      
# there. The same script also creates appropriate Linux file systems,                                  
# either ext2fs, or Linux swap. There is limited support for FAT12,                                    
# FAT16 and FAT32. For anything else, you're on your own.                                              
                                                                                                       
# Note for FAT32: According to the MS KB, there are more than one                                      
# reserved sectors for FAT32, usually 32, but it can vary. Do a search                                 
# in M$'s KB for "boot sector" or BPB for the gory details. For more                                   
# info than you really need on how boot sectors are used, see                                          
# http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q140/4/18.asp                                       
                                                                                                       
# You can also edit dev.x to change the sizes of partitions. Don't                                     
# forget, if you change the size of a FAT partition across the 32MB                                    
# boundary, you need to change the type as well! Run "fdisk /dev/hda"                                  
# or some such, then the l command to see the available partition                                      
# types. Then go ahead and edit dev.x appropriately. Also, when moving                                 
# partition boundarys with hand edits, make sure you move both logical                                 
# and extended partition boundaries appropriately.                                                     
                                                                                                       
# Bad block checking right now is a quick read of the partition. A                                     
# writing check is also possible but more difficult. You have to run                                   
# badblocks as a separate command, and pass the bad block list to                                      
# mke2fs in a file (in /tmp, which is a ram disk). You also have to                                    
# know how large the blocks are, which you learn by running                                            
# dumpe2fs. It gets messy and I haven't done it yet. You probably                                      
# don't need it for a new hard drive, but if you have had a hard drive                                 
# crash on you and you are reusing it (while you are waiting for its                                   
# replacement to come in, I presume), then I highly recommend it. Let                                  
# me know how you do it.                                                                               
                                                                                                       
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                                          
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                                                       
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# cut2fmt figures out the format string for the unpack function we use                                 
# to slice and dice the output from fdisk. From Christiansen and                                       
# Torkington, Perl Cookbook 5.                                                                         
                                                                                                       
sub cut2fmt {                                                                                          
    my (@positions) = @_;                                                                              
    my $template    = '';                                                                              
    my $lastpos     = 1;                                                                               
                                                                                                       
    foreach $place (@positions) {                                                                      
        $template .= "A" . ($place - $lastpos) . " ";                                                  
        $lastpos = $place;                                                                             
    }                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
    $template .= "A*";                                                                                 
    return $template;                                                                                  
}                                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# Sub gpl, a subroutine to ship the GPL and other header information                                   
# to the current output file.                                                                          
                                                                                                       
sub gpl {                                                                                              
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT <<FINIS;                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
# Copyright 2001 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.                                 
                                                                                                       
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it                              
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the                                
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your                               
# option) any later version.                                                                           
                                                                                                       
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but                                  
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                                           
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU                                    
# General Public License for more details.                                                             
                                                                                                       
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along                              
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,                              
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                                                
                                                                                                       
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/                             
                                                                                                       
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                                          
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                                                       
                                                                                                       
FINIS                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
}                                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# Begin main line code.                                                                                
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# Provide a default device.                                                                            
                                                                                                       
# print "\$ARGV[0] is $ARGV[0].\n";                                                                    
                                                                                                       
$device = defined ($ARGV[0]) ? $ARGV[0] : "/dev/hda";                                                  
                                                                                                       
# Need to check to see if $device is a sym link. If it is, the mount                                   
# point is the target of the link. (Mandrake) Otherwise we search for                                  
# mount points on $device. Fedora, Red Hat.                                                            
                                                                                                       
if ( -l $device) {                                                                                     
                                                                                                       
    # It is a sym link. Get the target of the link, then make it into                                  
    # an absolute path, preserving the numbering.                                                      
                                                                                                       
    $mountdev = '/dev/' . readlink ($device);                                                          
    $mountdev =~ s|ide/host(\d+)/bus(\d+)/target(\d+)/lun(\d+)/disc|ide/host\1/bus\2/target\3/lun\4|;  
} else {                                                                                               
    # not a sym link; just assign it.                                                                  
    $mountdev = $device;                                                                               
}                                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
# print "Device is $device; mount device is $mountdev.\n";                                             
                                                                                                       
# Prepare format string. Here are two format strings I have found                                      
# useful. Here, column numbers are 1 based, i.e. the leftmost column                                   
# is column 1, not column 0 as in Emacs.                                                               
                                                                                                       
# We select a format string according to fdisk's version.                                              
                                                                                                       
$fdpid = open (FDVER, "fdisk -v |") or die "Couldn't fork: $!\n";                                      
while (<FDVER>) {                                                                                      
    @_ = unpack ("A7 A*", $_);                                                                         
    $fdver=$_[1];                                                                                      
    $fdver =~ s/[^\d.]//g; # strip non-numbers, non-periods, as in "2.12pre".                          
}                                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
# print "fdisk version is $fdver\n";                                                                   
                                                                                                       
if ($fdver < 2.12) {                                                                                   
# fdisk to 2.11?? Red Hat, Fedora Core 1                                                               
    $fmt = cut2fmt (11, 19, 24, 34, 45, 49);                                                           
} else {                                                                                               
# fdisk 2.12 & up?? Mandrake 10.0, Fedora Core 2                                                       
    $fmt = cut2fmt (12, 14, 26, 38, 50, 55);                                                           
}                                                                                                      
# print "Format string is $fmt.\n";                                                                    
                                                                                                       
# define fields in the array @_.                                                                       
$dev = 0;                                                                                              
$bootable = 1;                                                                                         
$firstcyl = 2;                                                                                         
$lastcyl = 3;                                                                                          
$parttype = 5;                                                                                         
$partstring = 6;                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
$target = "\/target";                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
$outputfilename = $device;                                                                             
$outputfilename =~ s/\//./g;                                                                           
$outputfilename = substr ($outputfilename, 1, 100);                                                    
                                                                                                       
$outputfilepath = "\/root\/bin\/";                                                                     
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# Make a hash of the labels.                                                                           
$mpid = open (MOUNT, "mount -l |") or die "Couldn't fork: $!\n";                                       
while (<MOUNT>) {                                                                                      
    if ($_ =~ /^$mountdev/i) { # is this a line with a partition in it?                                
#       print $_;               # print it just for grins                                              
        split;                                                                                         
        if ($_[6] ne "") {      # only process if there actually is a label                            
            $_[6] =~ s/[\[\]]//g; # strike [ and ].                                                    
            $labels{$_[0]} = $_[6];                                                                    
#           print "The label of file device $_[0] is $labels{$_[0]}.\n";                               
        }                                                                                              
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
        # We only mount if it's ext2fs or ext3fs and read and write.                                   
                                                                                                       
        if ($_[4] =~ /ext[23]/ and $_[5] =~ /\(rw/ ) {                                                 
            if ($_[0] =~ /ide/i) {                                                                     
                                                                                                       
                # We have a devfs system, e.g. Mandrake. This code                                     
                # converts back from the devfs designation to the old                                  
                # /dev/hd* designation for tomsrtb. I have NOT checked                                 
                # this out for drives other than /dev/hda. Also, this                                  
                # code does not handle SCSI drives.                                                    
                                                                                                       
                if ( $_[0] =~ /target0/ && $_[0] =~ /bus0/ ) {                                         
                    $letter = 'a';                                                                     
                } elsif ( $_[0] =~ /target1/ && $_[0] =~ /bus0/) {                                     
                    $letter = 'b';                                                                     
                } elsif ( $_[0] =~ /target0/ && $_[0] =~ /bus1/) {                                     
                    $letter = 'c';                                                                     
                } else {                                                                               
                    $letter = 'd';                                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                $_[0] =~ s|/ide/host\d+/bus\d+/target\d+/lun\d+/part|/hd|g;                            
                $_[0] =~ s/hd/hd$letter/;                                                              
            }                                                                                          
            $mountpoints{$_[2]} = $_[0];                                                               
#             print "$_[2] is the mountpoint for tomsrtbt device $mountpoints{$_[2]}.\n";              
        }                                                                                              
    }                                                                                                  
}                                                                                                      
close (MOUNT);                                                                                         
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
$fpid = open (FDISK, "fdisk -l $device |") or die "Couldn't fork: $!\n";                               
                                                                                                       
open (OUTPUT, "> $outputfilepath${outputfilename}")                                                    
    or die "Couldn't open output file $outputfilepath${outputfilename}.\n";                            
                                                                                                       
while (<FDISK>) {                                                                                      
    if ($_ =~ /^$device/i) {    # is this a line with a partition in it?                               
#       print $_;               # print it just for grins                                              
        chop;                   # kill trailing \r                                                     
        @_ = unpack ($fmt, $_);                                                                        
                                                                                                       
        # now strip white spaces from cylinder numbers                                                 
        @_[$firstcyl] =~ s/[ \t]+//;                                                                   
        @_[$lastcyl] =~ s/[ \t]+//;                                                                    
        @_[$parttype] =~ s/[ \t]+//;                                                                   
                                                                                                       
        $partnumber = substr(@_[$dev], 8, 10); # get partition number for this line                    
        # just for grins                                                                               
#       print "  $partnumber, @_[$firstcyl], @_[$lastcyl], @_[$parttype], @_[$partstring]\n";          
                                                                                                       
        # Here we start creating the input to recreate the partition                                   
        # this line represents.                                                                        
                                                                                                       
        print OUTPUT "n\n";                                                                            
        if ($partnumber < 5) {                                                                         
            # primary Linux partition                                                                  
            if (@_[$parttype] == 83) {                                                                 
                print OUTPUT "p\n$partnumber\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                        
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) { # in case it's all on one cylinder                
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                # Now detect if this is an ext3 (journaling)                                           
                # partition. We do this using dumpe2fs to dump the                                     
                # partition and grepping on "journal". If the                                          
                # partition is ext2, there will be no output. If it is                                 
                # ext3, there will be output, and we use that fact to                                  
                # set a command line switch. The command line switch                                   
                # goes into an associative array (hash) so we don't                                    
                # have to remember to reset it to the null string when                                 
                # we're done.                                                                          
                                                                                                       
                $dpid = open (DUMPE2FS, "dumpe2fs @_[$dev] 2>/dev/null | grep -i journal |")           
                    or die "Couldn't fork: $!\n";                                                      
                while (<DUMPE2FS>) {                                                                   
#                   print "Dumpe2fs: $_";                                                              
                    $ext3{$_[$dev]} = "-j ";                                                           
                    last;                                                                              
                }                                                                                      
                close (DUMPE2FS);                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                if ($labels{@_[$dev]}) { # do we have a label?                                         
                    $format .= "echo\necho formatting $checking@_[$dev]\n";                            
                    $format .= "mke2fs $ext3{$_[$dev]}\$blockcheck -L $labels{@_[$dev]} @_[$dev]\n\n"; 
                } else {                                                                               
                    $format .= "echo\necho formatting $checking@_[$dev]\n";                            
                    $format .= "mke2fs $ext3{$_[$dev]}\$blockcheck @_[$dev]\n\n";                      
                }                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                # extended partition                                                                   
            } elsif (@_[$parttype] == 5) {                                                             
                # print ("Creating Extended Partition.\n");                                            
                print OUTPUT "e\n$partnumber\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                        
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                # extended partition, Win95 Ext'd (LBA)                                                
            } elsif (@_[$parttype] eq "f") {                                                           
                # print ("Creating Extended LBA Partition.\n");                                        
                print OUTPUT "e\n$partnumber\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                        
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\nf\n";                                                    
                                                                                                       
                # primary Linux swap partition                                                         
            } elsif (@_[$parttype] == 82) {                                                            
                print OUTPUT "p\n$partnumber\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                        
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\n82\n";                                                   
                $format .= "echo Making @_[$dev] a swap partition.\n";                                 
                $format .= "mkswap \$blockcheck @_[$dev]\n\n";                                         
                                                                                                       
                # Primary mess-dos partition. We don't handle hidden                                   
                # partitions.                                                                          
            } elsif ( @_[$parttype] == 1 || @_[$parttype] == 4 || @_[$parttype] == 6                   
                      || @_[$parttype] eq "b" || @_[$parttype] eq "c"                                  
                      || @_[$parttype] eq "e" ) {                                                      
                # print ("Making DOS primary partition.\n");                                           
                print ("dd if=@_[$dev] of=$outputfilepath$outputfilename$partnumber");                 
                print (" bs=512 count=1\n");                                                           
                system ("dd if=@_[$dev] of=$outputfilepath$outputfilename$partnumber bs=512 count=1"); 
                print OUTPUT "p\n$partnumber\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                        
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) { # in case it's all on one cylinder                
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\n@_[$parttype]\n";                                        
                $format .= "echo\necho formatting $checking@_[$dev]\n";                                
                $format .= "mkdosfs \$blockcheck";                                                     
                if ( @_[$parttype] == b || @_[$parttype] == c) {                                       
                    # We have a W9x FAT32 partition. Add a command line switch.                        
                    $format .= " -F 32";                                                               
                }                                                                                      
                $format .= " @_[$dev]\n";                                                              
                $format .= "# restore FAT boot sector.\n";                                             
                $format .= "dd if=$outputfilename$partnumber of=@_[$dev] bs=512 count=1\n\n";          
                                                                                                       
            } else {                                                                                   
                # anything else partition                                                              
                print OUTPUT "p\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                                     
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\n@_[$parttype]\n";                                        
            }                                                                                          
                                                                                                       
        } else {                                                                                       
            # logical Linux partition                                                                  
            if (@_[$parttype] == 83) {                                                                 
                print OUTPUT "l\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                                     
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                # Now detect if this is an ext3 (journaling)                                           
                # partition. We do this using dumpe2fs to dump the                                     
                # partition and grepping on "journal". If the                                          
                # partition is ext2, there will be no output. If it is                                 
                # ext3, there will be output, and we use that fact to                                  
                # set a command line switch. The command line switch                                   
                # goes into an associative array (hash) so we don't                                    
                # have to remember to reset it to the null string when                                 
                # we're done.                                                                          
                                                                                                       
                $dpid = open (DUMPE2FS, "dumpe2fs @_[$dev] 2>/dev/null | grep -i journal |")           
                    or die "Couldn't fork: $!\n";                                                      
                while (<DUMPE2FS>) {                                                                   
#                   print "Dumpe2fs: $_";                                                              
                    $ext3{$_[$dev]} = "-j ";                                                           
                    last;                                                                              
                }                                                                                      
                close (DUMPE2FS);                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                if ($labels{@_[$dev]}) { # do we have a label?                                         
                    $format .= "echo\necho formatting $checking@_[$dev]\n";                            
                    $format .= "mke2fs $ext3{@_[$dev]}\$blockcheck -L $labels{@_[$dev]} @_[$dev]\n\n"; 
                } else {                                                                               
                    $format .= "echo\necho formatting $checking@_[$dev]\n";                            
                    $format .= "mke2fs $ext3{@_[$dev]}\$blockcheck @_[$dev]\n\n";                      
                }                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
                # logical Linux swap partition                                                         
            } elsif (@_[$parttype] == 82 ) {                                                           
                print OUTPUT "l\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                                     
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\n82\n";                                                   
                $format .= "echo Making @_[$dev] a swap partition.\n";                                 
                $format .= "mkswap \$blockcheck @_[$dev]\n\n";                                         
                                                                                                       
                # Logical mess-dos partition. We don't handle hidden                                   
                # partitions.                                                                          
                                                                                                       
            } elsif ( @_[$parttype] == 1 || @_[$parttype] == 4 || @_[$parttype] == 6                   
                      || @_[$parttype] eq "b" || @_[$parttype] eq "c"                                  
                      || @_[$parttype] eq "e" ) {                                                      
#               print ("Making DOS logical partition.\n");                                             
                print ("dd if=@_[$dev] of=$outputfilepath$outputfilename$partnumber");                 
                print (" bs=512 count=1\n");                                                           
                system ("dd if=@_[$dev] of=$outputfilepath$outputfilename$partnumber bs=512 count=1"); 
                print OUTPUT "l\n$partnumber\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                        
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) { # in case it's all on one cylinder                
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\n@_[$parttype]\n";                                        
                $format .= "echo\necho formatting $checking@_[$dev]\n";                                
                $format .= "mkdosfs \$blockcheck";                                                     
                if ( @_[$parttype] == b || @_[$parttype] == c) {                                       
                    # We have a W9x FAT32 partition. Add a command line switch.                        
                    $format .= " -F 32";                                                               
                }                                                                                      
                $format .= " @_[$dev]\n";                                                              
                $format .= "# restore FAT boot sector.\n";                                             
                $format .= "dd if=$outputfilename$partnumber of=@_[$dev] bs=512 count=1\n\n";          
                                                                                                       
            } else {                                                                                   
                # anything else partition                                                              
                print OUTPUT "l\n@_[$firstcyl]\n";                                                     
                if (@_[$firstcyl] ne @_[$lastcyl]) {                                                   
                    print OUTPUT "@_[$lastcyl]\n";                                                     
                }                                                                                      
                print OUTPUT "t\n$partnumber\n@_[$parttype]\n";                                        
            }                                                                                          
                                                                                                       
        }                                                                                              
                                                                                                       
        # handle bootable partitions                                                                   
        if (@_[$bootable] =~ /\*/) {                                                                   
            print OUTPUT "a\n$partnumber\n";                                                           
        }                                                                                              
    }                                                                                                  
}                                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT "v\nw\n";                                                                                 
                                                                                                       
close (OUTPUT);                                                                                        
close (FDISK);                                                                                         
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
open (OUTPUT, "> ${outputfilepath}make.$outputfilename")                                               
    or die "Couldn't open output file ${outputfilepath}make.$outputfilename.\n";                       
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT <<FINIS;                                                                                  
#! /bin/sh                                                                                             
                                                                                                       
# A script to restore the partition data of a hard drive and format                                    
# the partitions. Created at bare metal backup time by the Perl script                                 
# make.fdisk.                                                                                          
FINIS                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
&gpl;                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT <<FINIS;                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
export blockcheck=\$1;                                                                                 
                                                                                                       
if [ "\$blockcheck" != "-c" ] && [ -n "\$blockcheck" ]                                                 
then                                                                                                   
    echo "\${0}: automated restore with no human interaction."                                         
    echo "\${0}: -c: block check during file system making."                                           
    exit 1;                                                                                            
fi                                                                                                     
                                                                                                       
FINIS                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
# Clean the old partition table out.                                                                   
print OUTPUT "dd if=/dev/zero of=$device bs=512 count=2\n\nsync\n\n";                                  
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT "fdisk $device \< $outputfilename\n\nsync\n\n";                                           
print OUTPUT $format;                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT "fdisk -l \"$device\"\n";                                                                 
                                                                                                       
close (OUTPUT);                                                                                        
                                                                                                       
# Now build the script that will build the mount points on the root                                    
# and other partitions.                                                                                
                                                                                                       
open (OUTPUT, "> ${outputfilepath}mount.$outputfilename")                                              
    or die "Couldn't open output file ${outputfilepath}make.$outputfilename.\n";                       
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT <<FINIS;                                                                                  
#! /bin/sh                                                                                             
                                                                                                       
# A script to create a minimal directory tree on the target hard drive                                 
# and mount the partitions on it. Created at bare metal backup time by                                 
# the Perl script make.fdisk.                                                                          
FINIS                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
&gpl;                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT <<FINIS;                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
# WARNING: If your Linux system mount partitions across hard drive                                     
# boundaries, you will have multiple "mount.dev.* scripts. You must                                    
# ensure that they run in the proper order. The root partition should                                  
# be mounted first, then the rest in the order they cascade. If they                                   
# cross mount, you'll have to handle that manually.                                                    
                                                                                                       
FINIS                                                                                                  
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                       
# We have a hash of mount points and devices in %mountpoints. However,                                 
# we have to process them such that directories are built on the                                       
# appropriate target partition. E.g. where /usr/local is on its own                                    
# partition, we have to mount /usr before we build /usr/local. We can                                  
# ensure this by sorting them. Shorter mount point paths will be built                                 
# first. We can't sort a hash directly, so we use an array.                                            
                                                                                                       
# We build commands to create the appropriate mount points and then                                    
# mount the partitions to the mount points. This is in preparation for                                 
# untarring the contents of the ZIP disk, done in restore.metadata.                                    
                                                                                                       
foreach $point ( sort keys %mountpoints) {                                                             
    print OUTPUT "\n# $point is the mountpoint for tomsrtbt device $mountpoints{$point}.\n";           
    print OUTPUT "mkdir $target$point\n";                                                              
    print OUTPUT "mount $mountpoints{$point} $target$point\n";                                         
}                                                                                                      
                                                                                                       
print OUTPUT "\nmount | grep -i \"$device\"\n";                                                        
                                                                                                       
close (OUTPUT);                                                                                        
                                                                                                       
# These scripts are dangerous & should only be visible to root.                                        
                                                                                                       
chmod 0700, "${outputfilepath}make.$outputfilename";                                                   
chmod 0700, "${outputfilepath}mount.$outputfilename";                                                  
chmod 0600, "${outputfilepath}$outputfilename";                                                        
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1.2. make.dev.hda

This script is a sample of the sort produced by make.fdisk, above. It uses
data files like dev.hda, below. It builds partitions and puts file systems on
some of them. This is the first script run at restore time.

If you are brave enough to edit dev.hda (q.v.), say, to add a new partition,
you may need to edit this script as well.

If you want make.dev.hda to check for bad blocks when it puts a file system
on the partitions, use a "-c" command line option.
#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# A script to restore the partition data of a hard drive and format          
# the partitions. Created at bare metal backup time by the Perl script       
# make.fdisk.                                                                
                                                                             
# Copyright 2001 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
export blockcheck=$1;                                                        
                                                                             
if [ "$blockcheck" != "-c" ] && [ -n "$blockcheck" ]                         
then                                                                         
    echo "${0}: automated restore with no human interaction."                
    echo "${0}: -c: block check during file system making."                  
    exit 1;                                                                  
fi                                                                           
                                                                             
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=2                                   
                                                                             
sync                                                                         
                                                                             
fdisk /dev/hda < dev.hda                                                     
                                                                             
sync                                                                         
                                                                             
echo                                                                         
echo formatting /dev/hda1                                                    
mkdosfs $blockcheck /dev/hda1                                                
# restore FAT boot sector.                                                   
dd if=dev.hda1 of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1                                   
                                                                             
echo                                                                         
echo formatting /dev/hda2                                                    
mke2fs -j $blockcheck -L /boot /dev/hda2                                     
                                                                             
echo                                                                         
echo formatting /dev/hda3                                                    
mke2fs -j $blockcheck -L / /dev/hda3                                         
                                                                             
echo Making /dev/hda5 a swap partition.                                      
mkswap $blockcheck /dev/hda5                                                 
                                                                             
fdisk -l "/dev/hda"                                                          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1.3. mount.dev.hda

This script is a sample of the sort produced by make.fdisk, above. It builds
mount points and mounts partitions on them, making the target file system
ready for restoring files. This is the second script run at restore time.

If you are brave enough to edit dev.hda (q.v.), say, to add a new partition,
you may need to edit this script as well.
#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# A script to create a minimal directory tree on the target hard drive       
# and mount the partitions on it. Created at bare metal backup time by       
# the Perl script make.fdisk.                                                
                                                                             
# Copyright 2001 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
# WARNING: If your Linux system mount partitions across hard drive           
# boundaries, you will have multiple "mount.dev.* scripts. You must          
# ensure that they run in the proper order. The root partition should        
# be mounted first, then the rest in the order they cascade. If they         
# cross mount, you'll have to handle that manually.                          
                                                                             
                                                                             
# / is the mountpoint for /dev/hda3.                                         
mkdir /target/                                                               
mount /dev/hda3 /target/                                                     
                                                                             
# /boot is the mountpoint for /dev/hda2.                                     
mkdir /target/boot                                                           
mount /dev/hda2 /target/boot                                                 
                                                                             
mount | grep -i "/dev/hda"                                                   
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1.4. dev.hda

This data file is used at restore time. It is fed to fdisk by the script 
make.dev.hda. It is produced at backup time by make.fdisk. Those familiar
with fdisk will recognize that each line is an fdisk command or value, such
as a cylinder number. Thus, it is possible to change the partition sizes and
add new partitions by editing this file. That's why the penultimate command
is v, to verify the partition table before it is written.
n                                                                            
p                                                                            
1                                                                            
1                                                                            
29                                                                           
t                                                                            
1                                                                            
6                                                                            
a                                                                            
1                                                                            
n                                                                            
p                                                                            
2                                                                            
30                                                                           
44                                                                           
n                                                                            
e                                                                            
3                                                                            
45                                                                           
1023                                                                         
n                                                                            
l                                                                            
45                                                                           
944                                                                          
n                                                                            
l                                                                            
945                                                                          
1023                                                                         
t                                                                            
6                                                                            
82                                                                           
v                                                                            
w                                                                            
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1.5. save.metadata

This is the first script to run as part of the backup process. It calls 
make.fdisk, above. If you have a SCSI hard drive or multiple hard drives to
back up, edit the call to make.fdisk appropriately.
#! /bin/sh                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# A script to save certain meta-data off to the boot partition. Useful for                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
# restoration.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Time-stamp: <2004-04-29 15:36:52 root save.metadata>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification, Charles Curley.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
# option) any later version.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
# General Public License for more details.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# 2003 01 08: We now age the output from rpm -VA to make back                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
# comparisons easier.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# The loop that creates directories now has the -p option for mkdir,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# which means you can create parents on the fly if they don't already                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
# exist.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# initrd is now in the list of directories to create automatically.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# We now exclude more stuff when building the tarballs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# 2002 07 01: Went to bzip2 to compress the archives, for smaller                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
# results. This is important in a 100MB ZIP disk. Also some general                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
# code cleanup.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# 2002 07 01: The function crunch will tar and BZIP2 the                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
# archives. This is cleaner than the old code, and has better safety                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# checking.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Crunch: A function to compress the contents of a directory and put                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# the archive onto the ZIP disk.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# The first parameter is the name of the archive file to be                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
# created. The backup location, $zip, will be prepended and the                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
# extension, "tar.bz2" will be appended.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# All following parameters will be taken as additional directories or                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
# files to be put into the archive.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
function crunch {                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
if [ -z "$1" ] || [ -z "$2" ]   # Checks if parameter #1 or #2 is zero length.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
then                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   echo "-Parameter #1 or #2 is missing.-"  # Also if no parameter is passed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
   return 1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
else                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   local file=$1                # The archive file to create                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
   shift                        # Discard the file name                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
   local dirs=$@                # The director[y|ies] to archive                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   local tarcmd="tar -cjf"      # The tar command.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   $tarcmd  $zip/$file.tar.bz2 $dirs # do it!!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   error=$?                     # Preserve the exit code                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   if [ $error != 0 ]           # Did we fail?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
   then                         # Yes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
      echo "Tar failed with error $error"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
      echo $tarcmd $zip/$file.tar.bz2 $dirs                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      exit $error               # return tar's exit code as ours                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   fi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   return 0                     # For error testing if needed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
fi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Begin the main line code                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
export zip="/mnt/zip";          # Where we will put archives                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
#  export save="/mnt/save";                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
RPMVABACKS=/etc                 # where we keep our backups                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
RPMVAROOT=rpmVa                 # The root name of the pg backups                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
ANC=${RPMVABACKS}/${RPMVAROOT}.anc      # name for the oldest (ancient) backup                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
OLD=${RPMVABACKS}/${RPMVAROOT}.old      # name for the middling oldest backup                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
NEW=${RPMVABACKS}/${RPMVAROOT}.txt      # name for the newest backup                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
if [ -f ${ANC} ]; then                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
echo "Deleting ${ANC}"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
rm ${ANC}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
fi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
if [ -f ${OLD} ]; then                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
echo "Aging ${OLD}"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
mv ${OLD} ${ANC}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
fi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
if [ -f ${NEW} ]; then                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
echo "Aging ${NEW}"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
mv ${NEW} ${OLD}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
fi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Now we save hard drive information. Run make.fdisk on each hard                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
# drive in the order in which it mounted from the root partition. That                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
# is, run it first on the hard drive with your root partition, then                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
# any hard drives that mount to the first hard drive, then any hard                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
# drives that mount to those. For example, if your root partition is                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# on /dev/sdc, run "make.fdisk /dev/sdc" first.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# The reason for this is that make.fdisk produces a script to make                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
# mount points and then mount the appropriate partition to them during                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
# first stage restore. Mount points must be created on the partition                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# where they will reside. The partitions must be mounted in this                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# order. For example, if your /var and /var/ftp are both separate                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
# partitions, then you must mount /, create /var, then mount /var,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
# then create /var/ftp. The order in which the script "first.stage"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
# runs the mounting scripts is based on their time of creation.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# If necessary, put a line, "sleep 1" between calls to make.fdisk.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
echo "Saving hard drive info"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
make.fdisk /dev/hda                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# back up RPM metadata                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
echo "Verifying RPMs."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
rpm -Va | sort +2 -t ' ' > ${NEW}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
echo "Finished verifying RPMs; now mounting the ZIP drive."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Make sure we have the ZIP drive mounted.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
umount $zip                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
modprobe ppa                    # Driver for 100MB parallel port ZIP disk                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
mount $zip                      # It should have ext2fs on partition 1.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# clean it all out                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
rm -r $zip/*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
mkdir $zip/lost+found                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
echo "`hostname` bare metal ZIP disk, created `date`. `uname -a`" > $zip/README.txt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
echo "Building the ZIP drive backups."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# These are in case we need to refer to them while rebuilding. The                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
# rebuilding process should be mostly automated, but you never                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
# know....                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
fdisk -l /dev/hda > $zip/fdisk.hda                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
ls -al /mnt > $zip/ls.mnt.txt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
ls -al / > $zip/ls.root.txt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
cd /                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Build our minimal archives on the ZIP disk. These appear to be                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# required so we can restore later on.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
crunch boot boot                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
crunch root root --exclude root/.cpan --exclude root/.mozilla                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
crunch etc etc --exclude etc/samba --exclude X11                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
crunch lib lib                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
crunch usr.sbin usr/sbin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
crunch usr.bin usr/bin --exclude usr/bin/emacs --exclude usr/bin/emacs-21.2 --exclude usr/bin/emacsclient --exclude usr/bin/emacs-nox --exclude usr/bin/gs --exclude usr/bin/pine --exclude usr/bin/gimp-1.2 --exclude usr/bin/doxygen --exclude usr/bin/postgres --exclude usr/bin/gdb --exclude usr/bin/kmail --exclude usr/bin/splint --exclude usr/bin/odbctest --exclude usr/bin/php --exclude usr/bin/xchat --exclude usr/bin/gnucash --exclude usr/bin/pdfetex  --exclude usr/bin/pdftex --exclude usr/bin/smbcacls --exclude usr/bin/evolution-calendar --exclude usr/bin/xpdf --exclude usr/bin/xmms 
crunch sbin sbin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
crunch bin bin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
crunch dev dev                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
crunch kerberos usr/kerberos/lib/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Now optional saves.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# arkeia specific:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
# crunch arkeia usr/knox                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# save these so we can use ssh for restore. *crack* for RH 7.0 login                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
# authentication.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
crunch usr.lib usr/lib/*crack* usr/lib/libz* usr/lib/libssl* usr/lib/libcrypto*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# save the scripts we used to create the ZIP disk and the ones we will                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
# use to restore it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
mkdir $zip/root.bin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
cp -p /root/bin/* $zip/root.bin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
rm $zip/root.bin/*~ $zip/root.bin/#*#                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
echo "Testing our results."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
find $zip -iname "*.bz2" | xargs bunzip2 -t                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
# Not a normal part of the process: we duplicate the ZIP disk onto an                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
# NFS mount elsewhere.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
#  echo "Backing the ZIP drive to the NFS mount."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
#  umount $save                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
#  mount $save                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
#  rm -r $save/zip                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
#  mkdir $save/zip                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
#  cp -pr $zip $save                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
du -hs ${zip}*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
df -m                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1.6. restore.metadata

This script restores metadata from the ZIP disk as a first stage restore.
#! /bin/sh                                                                     
                                                                               
# A script to restore the meta-data from the ZIP disk. This runs under         
# tomsrtbt only after partitions have been rebuilt, file systems made,         
# and mounted. It also assumes the ZIP disk has already been                   
# mounted. Mounting the ZIP disk read only is probably a good idea.            
                                                                               
# Time-stamp: <2003-08-23 10:09:16 ccurley restore.metadata>                   
                                                                               
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.         
                                                                               
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it      
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the        
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your       
# option) any later version.                                                   
                                                                               
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but          
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                   
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU            
# General Public License for more details.                                     
                                                                               
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along      
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,      
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                        
                                                                               
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/     
                                                                               
# 2003 08 23: Oops: tar on tomsrtbt does not respect -p. Try setting           
# umask to 0000 instead.                                                       
                                                                               
# 2003 02 13: Tar was not preserving permissions on restore. Fixed             
# that.                                                                        
                                                                               
# 2002 07 01: Went to bzip2 to compress the archives, for smaller              
# results. This is important in a 100MB ZIP disk. Also some general            
# code cleanup.                                                                
                                                                               
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                  
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                               
                                                                               
umask 0000                                                                     
                                                                               
zip="/mnt";                     # Where we mount the zip drive.                
target="/target";               # Where the hard drive to restore is mounted.  
                                                                               
ls -lt $zip                     # Warm fuzzies for the user.                   
                                                                               
cd $target                                                                     
                                                                               
# Restore the archived metadata files.                                         
for archive in $( ls $zip/*.bz2 ); do                                          
echo $archive                                                                  
ls -al $archive                                                                
bzip2 -dc $archive | tar -xf -                                                 
done                                                                           
                                                                               
# Build the mount points for our second stage restoration and other            
# things.                                                                      
                                                                               
# If you boot via an initrd, make sure you build a directory here so           
# the kernel can mount the initrd at boot.                                     
                                                                               
for dir in mnt/zip mnt/cdrom mnt/floppy mnt/imports proc initrd; do            
mkdir -p $target/$dir                                                          
done                                                                           
                                                                               
chmod a-w $target/proc          # Restore /proc's read-only permissions        
                                                                               
# Restore the scripts we used to create the ZIP disk and the ones we will      
# use to restore it. These should be the latest & greatest in case we had      
# to do any editing during 1st stage restore.                                  
cp -p $zip/root.bin/* $target/root/bin                                         
                                                                               
# Now install the boot sector.                                                 
chroot $target /sbin/lilo -C /etc/lilo.conf                                    
                                                                               
df -m                                                                          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.1.7. first.stage

This script runs the entire first stage restore with no operator
intervention.

If you want to check for bad blocks when it puts a file system on the
partitions, use a "-c" command line option.
#! /bin/sh                                                                           
                                                                                     
# A master script to run the other, detailed scripts. Use this script                
# only if you want no human intervention in the restore process. The                 
# only option is -c, which forces bad block checking during formatting               
# of the partitions.                                                                 
                                                                                     
# Time-stamp: <2003-04-24 10:03:07 ccurley first.stage>                              
                                                                                     
# Copyright 2002 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.               
                                                                                     
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it            
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the              
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your             
# option) any later version.                                                         
                                                                                     
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but                
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                         
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU                  
# General Public License for more details.                                           
                                                                                     
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along            
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,            
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                              
                                                                                     
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/           
                                                                                     
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                        
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                                     
                                                                                     
export blockcheck=$1;                                                                
                                                                                     
if [ "$blockcheck" != "-c" ] && [ -n "$blockcheck" ]                                 
then                                                                                 
    echo "${0}: automated restore with no human interaction."                        
    echo "${0}: -c: block check during file system making."                          
    exit 1;                                                                          
fi                                                                                   
                                                                                     
cd /mnt/root.bin                # just in case we aren't already where we should be. 
                                                                                     
for drive in $( ls make.dev.* ); do                                                  
    ./$drive $blockcheck;                                                            
done                                                                                 
                                                                                     
                                                                                     
# WARNING: If your Linux system mount partitions across hard drive                   
# boundaries, you will have multiple "mount.dev.* scripts. You must                  
# ensure that they run in the proper order, which the loop below may                 
# not do. The root partition should be mounted first, then the rest in               
# the order they cascade. If they cross mount, you'll have to handle                 
# that manually.                                                                     
                                                                                     
# The "ls -tr" will list the scripts in the order they are created, so               
# it might be a good idea to create them (in the script save.metadata)               
# in the order in which you should run them.                                         
                                                                                     
for drive in $( ls -tr mount.dev.* ); do                                             
    ./$drive;                                                                        
done                                                                                 
                                                                                     
./restore.metadata                                                                   
                                                                                     
# People who are really confident may comment this line in.                          
# reboot                                                                             
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.2. Second Stage

These scripts run on the computer being backed up or restored.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.2.1. back.up.all

This script saves to another computer via an NFS mount. You can adapt it to
save to tape drives or other media.
#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# Back up the entire system to another computer's drive. To make this        
# work, we need a convenient chunk of disk space on the remote computer we   
# can nfs mount as /mnt/save.                                                
                                                                             
# Time-stamp: <2003-04-24 09:56:05 ccurley back.up.all>                      
                                                                             
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
save="/mnt/save"                                                             
                                                                             
# Make sure it's there                                                       
umount $save                                                                 
mount $save                                                                  
                                                                             
cd /                                                                         
                                                                             
rm $save/tester.tar.old.gz                                                   
mv $save/tester.tar.gz $save/tester.tar.old.gz                               
                                                                             
# save everything except /mnt, /proc, and nfs mounted directories.           
                                                                             
time tar cf - / --exclude /mnt --exclude /proc --exclude $save\              
    | gzip -c > $save/tester.tar.gz                                          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.2.2. back.up.all.ssh

This script does exactly what back.up.all does, but it uses ssh instead of
nfs.
#! /bin/sh                                                                          
                                                                                    
# Back up the entire system to another computer's drive. To make this               
# work, we need a convenient chunk of disk space on the remote                      
# computer. This version uses ssh to do its transfer, and compresses                
# using bz2. This means this script has to know more about the other                
# computer, which does not make for good modularization.                            
                                                                                    
# Time-stamp: <2003-04-24 09:56:52 ccurley back.up.all.ssh>                         
                                                                                    
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.              
                                                                                    
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it           
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the             
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your            
# option) any later version.                                                        
                                                                                    
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but               
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                        
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU                 
# General Public License for more details.                                          
                                                                                    
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along           
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,           
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                             
                                                                                    
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/          
                                                                                    
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                       
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                                    
                                                                                    
save="/backs/tester"                                                                
backup_server="charlesc"                                                            
                                                                                    
# rotate the old backups. Do it all in one line to minimze authentication overhead. 
ssh $backup_server "rm $save/tester.tar.old.bz2; mv $save/tester.tar.bz2 \          
    $save/tester.tar.old.bz2"                                                       
                                                                                    
# save everything except /mnt, /proc, and squid directories.                        
                                                                                    
time tar cf - / --exclude /mnt --exclude /proc --exclude /var/spool/squid\          
    | ssh $backup_server "bzip2 -9 > $save/tester.tar.bz2"                          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.2.3. restore.all

This is the restore script to use if you backed up using back.up.all.
#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# A script to restore all of the data from an nfs mount. This is our final   
# stage restore.                                                             
                                                                             
# Time-stamp: <2003-04-24 09:58:51 ccurley restore.all>                      
                                                                             
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
export save="/mnt/save"                                                      
                                                                             
mount $save                                                                  
                                                                             
cd /                                                                         
gunzip -dc $save/tester.tar.gz | tar -xpkf -                                 
                                                                             
rm /var/run/*.pid                                                            
                                                                             
lilo                                                                         
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.2.4. restore.all.ssh

This is the restoration script to use if you used back.up.all.ssh to back up.
#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# A script to restore all of the data using ssh and bunzip2. This is         
# our final stage restore.                                                   
                                                                             
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# Time-stamp: <2003-04-24 09:59:10 ccurley restore.all.ssh>                  
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
save="/backs/tester/"                                                        
backup_server="charlesc"                                                     
                                                                             
cd /                                                                         
                                                                             
ssh $backup_server "cat $save/tester.tar.bz2" | bunzip2 | tar -xpkf -        
                                                                             
rm /var/run/*.pid                                                            
                                                                             
lilo                                                                         
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.3. Backup Server Scripts

The ssh scripts above have a possible security problem. If you run them on a
firewall, the firewall has to have access via ssh to the backup server. In
that case, a clever cracker might also be able to crack the backup server. It
would be more secure to run backup and restore scripts on the backup server,
and let the backup server have access to the firewall. That is what these
scripts are for. Rename them to get.x and restore.x where x is the name of
the target computer. Edit them (the variable $target's initialization) to use
the target computer's host name, or rewrite them to use a command line
argument.

These scripts backup and restore the target completely, not just the stage
one backup and restore. Also, note that get.tester backs up the ZIP disk as
well, in case you need to replace a faulty ZIP disk.

I use these scripts routinely.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.3.1. get.tester

#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# Back up another computer's drive to this system. To make this work, we     
# need a convenient chunk of disk space on this computer. This version       
# uses ssh to do its transfer, and compresses using bz2. This version was    
# developed so that the system to be backed up won't be authenticated to     
# log onto the backup computer. This script is intended to be used on a      
# firewall. You don't want the firewall to be authenticated to the backup    
# system in case the firewall is cracked.                                    
                                                                             
# Time-stamp: <2004-04-03 12:24:12 ccurley get.tester>                       
                                                                             
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
# 2004 04 03: added /sys to the list of excludes. It is a read-only          
# pseudo-file system like /proc.                                             
                                                                             
# 2002 07 01: We now set the path on the target to the zip drive with        
# a variable. This fixes a bug in the command to eject the zip disk.         
                                                                             
# 2002 07 01: The zip disk archives are now in bzip2 format, so this         
# script has been changed to reflect that.                                   
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
# The host name of the computer to be backed up.                             
target=tester                                                                
zip=/mnt/zip                                                                 
                                                                             
echo Backing up $target                                                      
                                                                             
echo Aging the ZIP disk backups.                                             
                                                                             
rm -r $target.old.zip                                                        
                                                                             
mv $target.zip $target.old.zip                                               
                                                                             
ssh $target "modprobe ppa ; mount -r $zip"                                   
                                                                             
echo Copying the ZIP disk.                                                   
                                                                             
# -r for recursive copy, -p to preserve times and permissions, -q for        
# quiet: no progress meter.                                                  
                                                                             
scp -qpr $target:$zip $target.zip                                            
                                                                             
du -hs $target.zip                                                           
                                                                             
                                                                             
echo Aging the archives                                                      
                                                                             
rm $target.tar.old.bz2                                                       
                                                                             
mv $target.tar.bz2 $target.tar.old.bz2                                       
                                                                             
                                                                             
echo Backing up $target to the backup server.                                
                                                                             
ssh $target tar -cf - / --exclude /sys --exclude /mnt --exclude /proc\       
    --exclude /var/spool/squid\                                              
    | bzip2 -9 | cat > $target.tar.bz2                                       
                                                                             
echo Testing the results.                                                    
find . -iname "*.bz2" | xargs bunzip2 -t                                     
                                                                             
ssh $target "eject $zip"                                                     
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

11.3.2. restore.tester

#! /bin/sh                                                                   
                                                                             
# A script to restore all of the data to tester via ssh. This is our final   
# stage restore.                                                             
                                                                             
# Time-stamp: <2003-04-24 09:59:45 ccurley restore.tester>                   
                                                                             
# Copyright 2000 through the last date of modification Charles Curley.       
                                                                             
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it    
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the      
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your     
# option) any later version.                                                 
                                                                             
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but        
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of                 
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU          
# General Public License for more details.                                   
                                                                             
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along    
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,    
# 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA                      
                                                                             
# You can also contact the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/   
                                                                             
# For more information contact the author, Charles Curley, at                
# http://www.charlescurley.com/.                                             
                                                                             
# The host name of the computer to be restored.                              
                                                                             
target=tester                                                                
                                                                             
bunzip2 -dc $target.tar.bz2 | ssh $target "cd / ; tar -xpkf - "              
                                                                             
ssh $target lilo                                                             
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

12. Resources

In no particular order. These are things you might want to investigate for
yourself. A listing here should not be taken as an endorsement. In fact, in
many case I have not used the product and cannot comment on it.

  * [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/unixbr/author.html] W. Curtis Preston's
    excellent Unix Backup & Recovery. This is the book that got me started on
    this bare metal recovery stuff. I highly recommend it; [http://
    www2.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue78/3839.html] read my review.
   
  * An old (2000) list of [http://www.fokus.gmd.de/linux/
    linux-distrib-small.html] small Linux disties.
   
  * [http://www.toms.net/rb] tomsrtbt, "The most Linux on 1 floppy disk." Tom
    also has links to other small disties.
   
  * The [http://www.tldp.org/] Linux Documentation Project. See particularly
    the "LILO, Linux Crash Rescue HOW-TO."
   
  * The Free Software Foundation's parted for editing (enlarging, shrinking,
    moving) partitions.
   
  * [http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/] QtParted looks to do the same thing
    with a GUI front end.
   
  * [http://www.partimage.org/] Partition Image for backing up partitions.
   
    From the web page: "Partition Image is a Linux/UNIX utility which saves
    partitions in many formats (see below) to an image file. The image file
    can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space, and split
    into multiple files to be copied on removable floppies (ZIP for example),
    .... The partition can be saved across the network since version 0.6.0."
   
  * [http://sourceforge.net/projects/bacula] Bacula is a GLPled backup
    product which has bare metal recovery code inspired in part by this
    HOWTO.
   
  * "[http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/] g4u ('ghost for unix') is a NetBSD-based
    bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a
    common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two
    functions. First is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to
    a FTP server. Other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and
    write it back to disk; network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the
    harddisk is processed as a image, any filesystem and operating system can
    be deployed using g4u."
   
  * "We present [http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/papers/
    frisbee-usenix03-base.html] Frisbee, a system for saving, transferring,
    and installing entire disk images, whose goals are speed and scalability
    in a LAN environment. Among the techniques Frisbee uses are an
    appropriately-adapted method of filesystem-aware compression, a custom
    application-level reliable multicast protocol, and flexible
    application-level framing. This design results in a system which can
    rapidly and reliably distribute a disk image to many clients
    simultaneously. For example, Frisbee can write a total of 50 gigabytes of
    data to 80 disks in 34 seconds on commodity PC hardware. We describe
    Frisbee's design and implementation, review important design decisions,
    and evaluate its performance."
   
  * There are a number of USB key disties available. Check [http://
    www.distrowatch.com/] DistroWatch for details.
   
  * CD-ROM based rescue kits. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list.
    If you know of one (or even something that pretends to be one), please
    [charlescurley at charlescurley dot com] let me know. You may find more
    recent information at [http://www.distrowatch.com/] DistroWatch.
   
      + Hugo Rabson's [http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/] Mondo "... creates
        one or more bootable Rescue CD's (or tape+floppies) containing some
        or all of your filesystem. In the event of catastrophic data loss,
        you will be able to restore from bare metal."
       
      + The [http://crashrecovery.org/] Crash Recovery Kit for Linux
       
      + "System recovery with Knoppix" is a good introduction to system
        recovery in general, and has some useful [http://www.knoppix.org/]
        Knoppix links.
       
      + "[http://emergencycd2.sourceforge.net/] Cool Linux CD is live CD with
        Linux system. This used 2.4 kernel and some free and demo soft."
       
      + [http://www.sysresccd.org/index.en.php] SystemRescueCd" is a linux
        system on a bootable cdrom for repairing your system and your data
        after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin
        tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions
        of the hard disk. It contains a lot of system utilities (parted,
        partimage, fstools, ...) and basic ones (editors, midnight commander,
        network tools). It aims to be very easy to use: just boot from the
        cdrom, and you can do everything. The kernel of the system supports
        most important file systems (ext2/ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs, vfat,
        ntfs, iso9660), and network ones (samba and nfs)."
       
      + [http://syslinux.zytor.com/] Syslinux builds boot code for floppy
        diskettes, CD-ROMs and Intel PXE (Pre-Execution Environment) images.
        It is not dependent on a floppy diskette image. You can build your
        own CDs with a number of tools, such as [http://www.toms.net/rb]
        tomsrtbt, on it.
       
      + In case you'd like to roll your own: "[http://www.linux-live.org/]
        Linux Live is a set of bash scripts which allows you to create [your]
        own LiveCD from every Linux distribution. Just install your favourite
        distro, remove all unnecessary files (for example man pages and all
        other files which are not important for you) and then download and
        run these scripts."
       
      + "The [http://www.linbox.com/en/ppart.html] PPART CD allows you to
        generate system recovery bootable CD of previously saved hard disks."
       
      + [http://rescuecd.sourceforge.net/] Timo's Rescue CD Set: " This set
        is my approach for an easy way to generate a rescue system on a
        bootable cd, which can easily be adapted to the own needs. The
        project evolves more and more into a 'debian on cd' project, so it's
        not only possible to use the system as a rescuecd, it is also
        possible to install a whole debian system on cd."
       
      + The [http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php] List of Live CDs
        has more CD based disties.
       
   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A. GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.1, March 2000

   
    Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite
    330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and
    distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is
    not allowed.
   
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0. PREAMBLE

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written
document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective
freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either
commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the
author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being
considered responsible for modifications made by others.

This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of
the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the
GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free
software.

We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free
software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program
should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does.
But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any
textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a
printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose
is instruction or reference.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms
of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work.
Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".

A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document
or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or
translated into another language.

A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the
Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or
authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related
matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall
subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics,
a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could
be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political
position regarding them.

The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are
designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says
that the Document is released under this License.

The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as
Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the
Document is released under this License.

A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the general
public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and
straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of
pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available
drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for
automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text
formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup
has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers
is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".

Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII
without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a
publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for
human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary
formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML
or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available,
and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output
purposes only.

The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such
following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License
requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have
any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent
appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the
text.
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2. VERBATIM COPYING

You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially
or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and
the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced
in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of
this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the
reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you
may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large
enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may
publicly display copies.
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3. COPYING IN QUANTITY

If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and
the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the
copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts:
Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover.
Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of
these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of
the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the
covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as
they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be
treated as verbatim copying in other respects.

If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you
should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual
cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.

If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more
than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along
with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a
publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete
Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general
network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using
public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must
take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies
in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible
at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you
distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of
that edition to the public.

It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the
Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them
a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.
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4. MODIFICATIONS

You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the
conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified
Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the
role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the
Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do
these things in the Modified Version:

 A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from
    that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should,
    if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You
    may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of
    that version gives permission.
   
 B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities
    responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version,
    together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all
    of its principal authors, if it has less than five).
   
 C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified
    Version, as the publisher.
   
 D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
   
 E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to
    the other copyright notices.
   
 F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving
    the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this
    License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
   
 G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and
    required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.
   
 H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
   
 I. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to it an
    item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the
    Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section
    entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year,
    authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then
    add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous
    sentence.
   
 J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public
    access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network
    locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on.
    These may be placed in the "History" section. You may omit a network
    location for a work that was published at least four years before the
    Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to
    gives permission.
   
 K. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications", preserve the
    section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone
    of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given
    therein.
   
 L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their
    text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not
    considered part of the section titles.
   
 M. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not be
    included in the Modified Version.
   
 N. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to conflict in
    title with any Invariant Section.
   

If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that
qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the
Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as
invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in
the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any
other section titles.

You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing
but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example,
statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an
organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a
passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of
Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and
one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any
one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover,
previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are
acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old
one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old
one.

The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give
permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply
endorsement of any Modified Version.
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5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions,
provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of
all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant
Sections of your combined work in its license notice.

The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple
identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are
multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make
the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in
parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if
known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section
titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the
combined work.

In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History" in the
various original documents, forming one section entitled "History"; likewise
combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections entitled
"Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled "Endorsements."
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6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents
released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this
License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the
collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim
copying of each of the documents in all other respects.

You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it
individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License
into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects
regarding verbatim copying of that document.
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7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and
independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version of the
Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation.
Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this License does not apply
to the other self-contained works thus compiled with the Document, on account
of their being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of
the Document.

If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of
the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire
aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround
only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers
around the whole aggregate.
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8. TRANSLATION

Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute
translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing
Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their
copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant
Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections.
You may include a translation of this License provided that you also include
the original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement
between the translation and the original English version of this License, the
original English version will prevail.
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9. TERMINATION

You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically
terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received
copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
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10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU
Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be
similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address
new problems or concerns. See [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/] http://
www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any
later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and
conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has
been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the
Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose
any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
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11. How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the
License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices
just after the title page:

   
    Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy, distribute
    and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
    License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
    Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the
    Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. A
    copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
    Documentation License".
   
If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections" instead
of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover Texts, write
"no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts being LIST"; likewise
for Back-Cover Texts.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend
releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software
license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free
software.

Notes

[1]  I emphasize copy because mkisofs will mung the file in the directory    
     from which it makes the ISO image.                                      
