Re: [PLUG] utility to image a linux host?

[Morgan Jones <morgan@morganjones.org>]

Sorry, that would be:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/somewhere/sda.image

you could restore it to a new disk:
dd if=/mnt/somewhere/sda.image of=/dev/sdb
or go disk to disk:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

Would /dev/sdb just need to be bigger than sda?  I don't think it would 
need to be identical..(?)

-morgan



Morgan Jones wrote:
> with dd it's theoretically very easy:
> 
> dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/somewhere
> 
> the filesystem mounted on /mnt/somewhere needs to have enough free space 
> to hold the entire contents of /dev/sda.  This won't help you create and 
> iso of course.
> 
> It's funny that you asked about an iso because I came across this in my 
> searching: http://www.sysimage.com
> 
> sysimage is a little more complex that I'd like: ie client-server and 
> focused around building an image server that can be used to create many 
> clients.  It is flarcreate and jumpstart all wrapped up in a custom 
> package..  It does seem to allow bare metal restores to a "golden image" 
> though which is very handy.
> 
> -morgan
> 
> 
> Casey Bralla wrote:
>> I was literally opening my eMail client to post a very similar request.  
>> I've got Gentoo pretty well where I like it, but it's a booger to get 
>> it to here.  (Also takes a long time).  I'd like to create a ISO image 
>> of my hard drive so that if I ever want to go back to this stage, I 
>> just boot to the DVD, and presto, it's there.
>>
>>
>> How do you do this with dd?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday 14 June 2008 10:49:13 am Morgan Jones wrote:
>>> I was talking to a coworker recently about 'flarcreate,' a solaris
>>> utillity that creates an image of a system that can be used to re-create
>>> a system either manually or via Jumpstart.  It's very handy for
>>> re-creating production environments in test or taking an ad-hoc backup,
>>> say, before an upgrade.
>>>
>>> Does such a utility exist for Linux (RHEL/Debian/Ubuntu)?  I know it can
>>> be done with dd but I'm looking for error checking and some awareness of
>>> the filesystem.  In particular, flarcreate will not backup empty space
>>> and can be told to exclude paths.
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> -morgan
>>>
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>>
> 
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