[1330] | 1 | Mondo for Debian
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| 2 | ================
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| 3 |
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| 4 | This text contains hints, workarounds and explanations for using mondo on a
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| 5 | Debian system.
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| 6 |
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| 7 | Location of files mondorescue.iso, MA.log.gz & changed.files
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| 8 | ------------------------------------------------------------
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| 9 |
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| 10 | The above files are all located in /var/cache/mindi irrespective of what
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| 11 | the upstream documentation may say.
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| 12 |
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| 13 |
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| 14 | Location of file mondorestore.log
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| 15 | ---------------------------------
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| 16 |
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| 17 | The above file is located in /var/log irrespective of what the upstream
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| 18 | documentation may say.
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| 19 |
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| 20 |
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| 21 | Kernel Panic when booting restore media with 2.6.18 kernel
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| 22 | ----------------------------------------------------------
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| 23 |
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| 24 | There may be a kernel panic when booting a restore media containing a
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| 25 | stock 2.8.18 Debian kernel.
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| 26 |
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| 27 | The workaround is to remove 'acpi=off' from the 'ADDITIONAL_BOOT_PARAMS'
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| 28 | variable defined at the beginning of /usr/sbin/mindi.
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| 29 |
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| 30 | This may only affect users with certain VIA chipsets. Please see Debian
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| 31 | bug #389931 for more details.
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| 32 |
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| 33 | Note: You will have to boot into the rescue media to verify you are not
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| 34 | affected by this. QEMU or VMware do not expose the problem!
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| 35 |
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| 36 |
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| 37 | NTFS Windows Installations not bootable after restore
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| 38 | -----------------------------------------------------
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| 39 |
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| 40 | After a restore, NTFS Windows installations may not be bootable. Rather an
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| 41 | error message "A disk read error occurred. Press Xtrl+Alt+Del to restart." is
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| 42 | displayed.
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| 43 |
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| 44 | A fix for this is to use gparted (and possibly gtparted but no other
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| 45 | partitioning tool) resize the NTFS filesystem to that it fills the entire
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| 46 | partition it lives in. The error appears to only happen for NTFS filesystems
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| 47 | that are smaller than the partition they live in.
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| 48 |
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| 49 |
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| 50 | Boot Images in /root/images
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| 51 | ---------------------------
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| 52 |
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| 53 | MondoRescue does not currently allow for influencing where the boot images it
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| 54 | creates are stored. They will always end up under /root/images. This can be a
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| 55 | problem on installations where the partition that holds /root is small.
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| 56 |
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| 57 | A workaround is to create a symbolic link to a different location with more
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| 58 | space. Example:
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| 59 |
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| 60 | /root/images -> /home/mondorescue/images
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| 61 |
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| 62 |
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| 63 | CD Streaming
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| 64 | ------------
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| 65 |
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| 66 | The CD streaming feature of mondoarchive (option '-C') is EXPERIMENTAL which
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| 67 | is what the manpage states. In fact, it appears to be rather broken. Some of
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| 68 | the issues are fixed in this package: selecting the burn speed should work,
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| 69 | it won't segfault during a mondoarchvie run. However, restoring from multiple
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| 70 | CDs still doesn't seem to work but hangs towards the end of the first CD.
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| 71 |
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| 72 | If you want to experiment with this feature, it might help to keep the
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| 73 | following in mind:
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| 74 |
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| 75 | - Use blank CDs only. If you use CDRWs (which is recommended for
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| 76 | environmentally and monetarian reasons by the author of this text) make sure
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| 77 | they are blank when throwing them at mondoarchive in streaming mode.
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| 78 | - Don't make mistakes when feeding media to mondoarchive in streaming mode. It
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| 79 | will choke and the backup will have to be restarted.
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| 80 |
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| 81 | Having said that, streaming is certainly a useful feature. I'll work on it as
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| 82 | time permits. If your time does permit, I am receptive to patches (and so is
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| 83 | upstream).
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| 84 |
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| 85 |
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| 86 | Image Archiving: (V)FAT versus NTFS
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| 87 | -----------------------------------
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| 88 |
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| 89 | If you have a (V)FAT partition please mount it to get it backed up by
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| 90 | mondoarchive and restored by mondo. Using the '-x' option will not work.
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| 91 |
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| 92 | For NTFS, '-x' is the way to go.
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| 93 |
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| 94 |
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| 95 | "Too many open files" in log
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| 96 | ----------------------------
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| 97 |
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| 98 | You may get entries in the log similar to this one:
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| 99 |
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| 100 | getfacl: /home/andree/shed/kernel/kernel-source-2.4.26/include/config/paride/pf: Too many open files
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| 101 |
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| 102 | If you do, increase the number of allowed open file descriptors for the user
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| 103 | session. The default value for open file descriptors in Debian is 1024. To
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| 104 | increase this value, if you run bash (and potentially other shells), use
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| 105 | 'ulimit -n 2048' to double this.
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| 106 |
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| 107 |
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| 108 | Using the File-Browser for Partial Restore
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| 109 | ------------------------------------------
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| 110 |
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| 111 | When using mondorestore to selectively restore files, the 'Editing filelist'
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| 112 | window will only list a limited, hardcoded number of files. This number is
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| 113 | defined by define 'ARBITRARY_MAXIMUM' in include 'my-stuff.h'. This value is
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| 114 | currently set to 500 in the upstream source and has been increased to 2000 for
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| 115 | the Debian package. Changing this value requires a recompile of the package.
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| 116 |
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| 117 | A workaround for this shortcoming is to restore a complete directory tree to a
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| 118 | temporary location, delete all unwanted files and directories, and move the
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| 119 | remainder to its final destination.
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| 120 |
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| 121 |
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| 122 | Using floppy disks as rescue media
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| 123 | ----------------------------------
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| 124 |
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| 125 | mondoarchive will offer to write a set of rescue floppies (unless the '-F'
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| 126 | switch is used). These floppy disks will only work with the FAILSAFE kernel. The
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| 127 | reason is that stock Debian kernels don't have the floppy driver built into the
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| 128 | kernel and that the kernel is too large for one floppy with an initrd and a
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| 129 | kernel image. Because of the space issue, mondoarchiv (or rather mindi) creates
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| 130 | a root/boot floppy set. Because the stock kernel does not have floppy support
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| 131 | compiled in a kernel panic results when trying to acces the second (the root)
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| 132 | floppy.
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| 133 |
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| 134 | Also, building the boot/root floppy images requires that lilo is installed on
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| 135 | the system. This does not mean that it actually needs to be used to boot the
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| 136 | system, only that the package is installed. (Because most people won't need the
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| 137 | boot/root floppies, the mindi package only suggests the lilo package.)
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| 138 |
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| 139 | Finally a word of caution: Floppy disks are notoriously unreliable. Dont't use
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| 140 | them unless you really really have to. (A CD writer costs the same as a few
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| 141 | boxes of floppy disks these days.)
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| 142 |
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| 143 | -- Andree Leidenfrost <andree@debian.org> Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:45:37 +1000
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