Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 24, 2003 Report Share Posted June 24, 2003 I was looking at PartImage to make images to backup onto DVD for my system, but the man says that making an image of a mounted partition is possible but "DANGEROUS!" (that's a quote...lol). I know I can go into single-user mode to unmount /home and make an image, but what about /, /usr, /usr/local, /var, etc, etc? Edit: I'm checking into Mondo Rescue instead, which looks easier/better. An answer to this question would still be nice in case I need it in the future for whatever reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paleo Posted June 24, 2003 Report Share Posted June 24, 2003 they have bootable floppy/CD images available so you can run partimage from a floppy/CD. I haven't used it but their documentation says that this is the method. I wonder what exactly the danger is. Do they say anywhere? What would happen if you mount the root partition read-only by mount -o ro,remount / If you have an installation to spare you might give it a try :roll: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramfree17 Posted June 24, 2003 Report Share Posted June 24, 2003 all i can think of is this, storage imaging tools take a snapshot of your partition so they rely on the fact that the contents of the partition being processed does not change. another thing is that these tools access the partition natively. if im going to let my mind rationalize that, i think the methods used by the tools can conflict with the way the kernel is using those partitions. a conflict on data access means one thing for us users: your data is screwed. but then again one could probably get away with mounting drives as read-only, but if your data is valuable to you why tempt fate when you have already been warned? :#: ciao! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 24, 2003 Report Share Posted June 24, 2003 Ramfree17 hits the nail on the head really. A backup that didn't work is sometimes worse than no backup becuase you get a false sense of safely and take risks, shortcuts you might otherwise not. However, I think mounting RO is ok, Commercial backups are usually run from a seperate dedicated server. Some stuff will always change, specifically /var. Since your saving raw data from inodes then basically no guarantees exist things aren't moved around if you are mounted RW. There is usually a backup log file for instance so that iself will change during the backup. You can end up with a circular dependency (like tar myfile.tar * will try and include myfile.tar becuase its in the directory but is changing all the time.) If you are looking at restoring the system exactly you will presumably do this unmounted. Alternatively you might just want to back up data in which case a LIVE backup is OK so long as you make sure you don't include any changing files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted June 24, 2003 Report Share Posted June 24, 2003 Go here and burn the iso for a partimage bootable cd.. /anon_ftp/pub/Partimage.ISO It's about 4-6 months old though.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 28, 2003 Ok, I grabbed that from the ftp site here. Now I have a question(s) (Mondo didn't work for me). This is how I'm making my images: partimage -z1 -o -d save /dev/whatever /mnt/whatever.partimg.gz Then, when the screen comes up, I tell it to break the images up into 4.5 Gig maximum (so I can store them on a DVD). I did not specify to not save the MBR (In other words, it did save the MBR...lol). I know that the man for partimage says that you can restore with partimage restore /dev/whatever /mnt/whatever.partimg but now here's my question. (Finally) My dev numbers are a little out of whack because I made new ones in the middle of a buncha stuff by resizing and so it gave it a higher number that the rest. So now I have this space of about 2 or 3 gigs that it won't let me delete because it is /dev/hda5 and the next one is /dev/hda7 and /dev/hda6 is at the end. I was trying to delete it, so that I could resize / bigger. So, what I'm wanting to do it is make all these images then wipe both HDs and reinstall 9.1 on the 80 Gig (/dev/hda) along with WinXP and Win2K and my backuo install of 8.1 on /dev/hdb (15 Gig). Will it matter to partimage where these partitions were before or their size? I'm assuming that I'll have to go through the whole install process for it to set up the MBR with the right numbers for the partitions, since I'll have new partitions in different places without the numbers out of order. I'm assuming I'm not going to want to restore the MBR, since the location and size of the partitions are different. Will partimage write over whatever is there if I do 'restore' or am I going to have to go in and manually uncompress the images and cp them over? Sorry for what may be dumb questions, but I have no clue when it comes to partition tables and MBR and stuff like that. The partition table *is* the MBR and describes the device numbers, size and location of the partitions, right? TIA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted June 28, 2003 Report Share Posted June 28, 2003 partimage requires the destination partition to be equal to or greater in size compared to the image. In other words, you can't restore a partition to a smaller partition. Other than that, it doesn't care.. If you boot off the partimage cd, I hope you are aware that you can simply enter partimage and it will provide you with a gui? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 28, 2003 I was not aware of that until I entered the command and a gui came up. It came up with the info I entered in the command line already picked, though, too. Thanks for pointing it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted June 28, 2003 Report Share Posted June 28, 2003 Steve, you are now officially a true linux user in mind, body, and soul :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 Heh. I was having a strange problem when booting off the partimage disk. I have two spare Windows FAT32 partitions, both with plenty of free space. The first time I tried to mount /dev/hda6 (win_e), it said permission denied: mount -t vfat /dev/hda6 /mnt but mounting /dev/hda5 worked mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt I backed up a couple partitions and rebooted into Linux to come here and ask the questions. Later, I rebooted with the disk and the second time /dev/hda5 gave me the permission denied error and /dev/hda6 worked. What is up with that? They looked identical when I did ls -l Luckily, I have yet to have both of them give me 'permission denied' on the same boot. lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest GorGor Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 Steve I may be missing the point (as always) but why can't you use a boot and root floppy to leave the partition you want to image unmounted? If its because you are having trouble with the cd burner or dvd burner, can I suggest you use the floppy sytem to save the image to SPARE partition and then load linux and burn ? I use the floppy system all the time, as I was used to the same technuque with norton ghost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 The partition I want to image is unmounted. I am using the partimage boot CD. It's the location I want to save the image to that is giving me trouble mounting it. It does have to be mounted to save an image to it with partimage, doesn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Germ Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 Yes, the partition you save the image to must be mounted. I'm not sure what is causing your problem. I haven't ran into it. You might try the partimage forum. http://www.partimage.org/forums/ /germ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 Steve, I'm not familiar with partimage but have you tried just using dd? Course you need somewhere to put the output file ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 I am nowhere near competent enough to comprehend dd enough to effectively use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.