In the past, I have always assumed that I would simply re-install if I lost my
root partition and only did backups for data partitions and home. My systems
are configured to have a boot partition, a root ("/") partition, a /home
partition, and other "my data" partitions. While I use LVM for my data
partitons, I have been using a regular disk partition for root. In the past
I have used partimage (and now partimage-ng) to backup disk partitions but
these programs do not work with LVM logical volumes.
Before I commit to putting my root partition on an LVM logical volume, I
thought I would like to try backing it up ... I have tried using dump/restore
and tar ... oh, backup/save seems to work just fine (no error message) but
restore/tar -x is NOT working.
Using restore, I get some selinux errors but not with tar -x. However, in
both cases, when I try to boot the system, I am getting errors such as not
finding /dev/root, /proc, etc.
Has anyone ever done a backup of the root partition? What program did you
use? Have you tried to restore and did it work? [or did you just trust that
it would?]
I did my testing using vmware virtuals but that should not matter. I
installed a"default" F9 installation with /boot and swap on the first scsi
virtual disk and "/" on a second scsi virtual disk in an LVM logical volume.
This system boots and runs just fine.
I first tried running from the built system by running dump against an LVM
snapshot of the root partition. In another virtual, bootup the F9 install in
Rescue mode, restore the /boot and swap partitions to the first disk, create
an LVM partition on the second disk and use pvcreate and vgcfgrestore to
setup to system to match the original one. Use restore (lots of selinux
errors) and try booting ... fails as describe above.
Next, I booted the F9 install cd in Rescue Mode and did the
dump "standalone" ... the repeated as above with the same result.
Next, use tar --xattrs -vpzcf to create my backup and try again .. save result
but the tar restore has only a few warning ... but the system does not boot.
Help! I have not lost anything yet but it sure would be nice to know that a
root partition can be backed up with something better that just using "dd" to
create a bit-by-bit image.
BTW, I am interested in an open source solution only ... I am not considering
commercial products.
Gene
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