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Partimage help, please......


chris z
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ok.....just where were all you fine folks last night while i was on MUSB looking for help? hmmm??? :lol:

 

i finally decided to do a backup of my MDK partitions. (better late than never......) i used Partimage v. 0.6.2. after reading through the less than helpful online documentation, & trying "partimage --help" but only getting "bash:command not found", i decided upon using the GUI method. after fiddling around there for about an hour, trying to figure things out, i finally got my images saved to a separate partiton on my hard drive. (HOORAY for me! :D ) but.....i still have several questions.....

 

question 1.

during the step where you can set Partimage to save your image at a predesired size, i found that i couldn't change the size, not matter what i tried. here's what i'm talking about, per the Partimage online docs...

 

Splitting is an option to use when creating an image. It makes it possible to create a number of smaller files containing the partition image rather than one large one. Two splitting modes are available

 

   * Automatic: when no space left A new volume will be created when there is no space left on the currently selected device. Then you will be asked for a new location to save the next part of the image.

   * Into files of a fixed size Several files of this size will be created instead of one big file.

 

You can use the fixed size mode if you want to copy your files onto removable media, or CD-R. For example, to burn your image onto CD, you might want to split it into files of 600 MB. Then, you can specify a fixed size to use, in Kilobytes (in this example, it would be 614400 KB).

 

ideally, i'd like to have 650mb images, so i can burn them to disk. i forget what the default size is right now, but it was something like 86666604kb. is there a trick to changing the fixed size setting to my own, preferred size? if so, what is it?!

 

question 2.

during the stage where it's starting to copy the image, i got a message that "e2fsck has found bad blocks, do you want to continue?" again, after searching to no avail for info on that message, i opted to continue. i know about e2fsck checking the file systems for integrity & such. i just didn't know if this will make my backup unusable. there was no option to fix the bad blocks, just "continue" or "cancel". i chose "continue", for lack of a better idea. that leads me to......

 

question 3.

as i said, i'm a bit familiar with e2fsck. it runs automatically during boot up on my system after a set amount of boots. (i think it's 23) it will also run if the system is shut down improperly (which i've been forced to do a few times :shock: ) again, after searching the man pages, online, & doing e2fsck --help, the only info i could find on it was the various commands associated with it & what they do. so, i tried doing e2fsck -cv /dev/hdc7 from terminal as root & got a warning about not running e2fsck on a mounted partition, or SEVERE DAMAGE could result. so, i backed out & didn't run it. is that message true, or just a scare tactic? and, if it's true, what is the proper way to run e2fsck?

 

as always, i'll be awaiting your wisdom......

 

Chris

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ok.....just where were all you fine folks last night while i was on MUSB looking for help? hmmm??? :lol:

 

I would like to say I was in a hot tub, but...

 

question 1.

during the step where you can set Partimage to save your image at a predesired size, i found that i couldn't change the size, not matter what i tried. here's what i'm talking about, per the Partimage online docs...

 

Try typing partimage into a terminal window and read the output. It gives you a list of arguments you can type in. See if you can find a size option.

 

question 2.

during the stage where it's starting to copy the image, i got a message that "e2fsck has found bad blocks, do you want to continue?" again, after searching to no avail for info on that message, i opted to continue. i know about e2fsck checking the file systems for integrity & such. i just didn't know if this will make my backup unusable. there was no option to fix the bad blocks, just "continue" or "cancel". i chose "continue", for lack of a better idea. that leads me to......

 

Partimage is not going to be responsible for fixing your disk issue. It is simply passing on the message that e2fsck is reporting. You need to boot off of Mandrake CD1 (hit F1, type rescue, go to console and run e2fsck against the partition when it is not mounted. If the utility reports bad blocks then you will have to look for an option for correcting this, meaning the data is moved from bad blocks and they are marked as bad (maybe).

 

Some other ideas..

 

partimage can be saved as a bootable cd. Look on the website for info. This is much better than running it with mounted partitions as the CD is in control rather than the Mandrake system.

 

You can also create a new partition and copy an old partition to. The goal would be to format the old partition. This might take care of any unsolvable bad block issues. You would need to make sure the old and new partitions are mounted and then do a copy command

 

copy -pax old new (whereever)

 

Do the reformmat and then copy them back. This is suggested, not as a backup, but to resolve the bad blocks.

 

Chris

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I would like to say I was in a hot tub, but...

 

i can truly say that Linux (once again) forced me to start drinking on a night i swore that i wouldn't!

 

Try typing partimage into a terminal window and read the output. It gives you a list of arguments you can type in. See if you can find a size option.

 

i was running Partimage from terminal, in GUI mode. when i type partimage in terminal, i get no options or output. it just opens up the GUI interface. when i type partimage --help, i get the "command not....." message, even though the docs says to type partimage --help for options.

 

Partimage is not going to be responsible for fixing your disk issue. It is simply passing on the message that e2fsck is reporting. You need to boot off of Mandrake CD1 (hit F1, type rescue, go to console and run e2fsck against the partition when it is not mounted. If the utility reports bad blocks then you will have to look for an option for correcting this, meaning the data is moved from bad blocks and they are marked as bad (maybe).

 

Some other ideas..

 

partimage can be saved as a bootable cd. Look on the website for info. This is much better than running it with mounted partitions as the CD is in control rather than the Mandrake system.

 

You can also create a new partition and copy an old partition to. The goal would be to format the old partition. This might take care of any unsolvable bad block issues. You would need to make sure the old and new partitions are mounted and t

hen do a copy command

 

copy -pax old new (whereever)

 

Do the reformmat and then copy them back. This is suggested, not as a backup, but to resolve the bad blocks.

 

that's just what i didn't want to hear. i realized it wouldn't take care of bad blocks, but some info other than "continue or cancel" would have been helpful. all i wanted to do is create a backup of my known, good, working Linux system, in case something would ever go totally fubar. but, i guess this is yet another tool that requires endless hours of playing with to (hopefully) get it to work. also, from what i did understand in the docs, you can't restore a partition image to a smaller or larger partition. lotta good that does. guess i'll leave well enough alone (once again) & see if there's any affordable, reliable backup software out there that works with Linux. or, just keep playing it cautious & hope that nothing ever goes wrong.

 

makes me sad......... :( such possibilites.......yet so far to go.

 

thanks for the answers.......

 

Chris

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I've been using partimage for the past year.

 

1. You can restore to a larger partition, but not a smaller.

 

2. Since partimage supports many different file systems, it doesn't make sense that they try to interprete the results.

 

3. Get it onto a CD and things will be easier. When backing up partitions, you need the partition to be 100% free from other users and running software.

 

4. Might want to consder moving to a reiserfs file system. More robust and under active development. Its a journaled file system so it is very quick to restart after a crash. Other possibilities is that your hard drive is simply having hard ware issues which means its nothing to do with software.

 

5. Another ides is to look at how you split your partitions. Most of my partitions are approx 5 gig in size since they can be compressed into smaller files vs a 20 gig partition.

 

I did quite a bit of re-doing my partitions and learning about them. Lots of learning time but my understanding of partitions is much better than before..

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