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Saturday, October 30, 2010

About Mondo Rescue

About Mondo Rescue

What is Mondo Rescue ?

Mondo is reliable. It backs up your GNU/Linux server or workstation to tape, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R[W], DVD+R[W], NFS or hard disk partition. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore all of your data [or as much as you want], from bare metal if necessary. Mondo is in use by Lockheed-Martin, Nortel Networks, Siemens, HP, IBM, NASA's JPL, the US Dept of Agriculture, dozens of smaller companies, and tens of thousands of users.

Mondo is comprehensive. Mondo supports LVM 1/2, RAID, ext2, ext3, ext4, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, VFAT, and can support additional filesystems easily: just e-mail the mailing list with your request. It supports software raid as well as most hardware raid controllers. It supports adjustments in disk geometry, including migration from non-RAID to RAID. Mondo runs on all major Linux distributions (RedHat, RHEL, SuSE, SLES, Mandriva, Debian, Gentoo) and is getting better all the time. You may even use it to backup non-Linux partitions, such as NTFS.

Mondo is free! It has been published under the GPL v2 (GNU Public License), partly to expose it to thousands of potential beta-testers but mostly as a contribution to the Linux community.

Mondo Rescue References

Here are some external references to Mondo. [PCQuest] [TechRepublic] [HP] [SSC] [HP again] [SFFTech] [SuSE] [Uninet.edu] [Linux Journal] [LJ again] [and again] [CCP14]

We also have freshmeat, FSF, IDABC entries.

Who is behind Mondo Rescue ?

Who is in the Mondo Devteam?

Bruno Cornec
lead development, maintenance, documentation, web site, rpm packaging, Mandriva packaging

Andree Leidenfrost
co-development, maintenance, Official Debian packager

Victor Gattegno
Mailing list support, contributor

Michael Shapiro
Code contributor

Lester Wade
Documentation contributor

Lars Rupp
Offical SuSE packager

Who has been behind Mondo Rescue ?

Who has been in the Mondo Devteam?

Hugo Rabson
original author: whithout Hugo you won't have any project today.

Stan Benoit
original beta testing; bugfixes

Héctor García Álvarez
original Debian release guru

Joshua Oreman
original FreeBSD port

Michael Clark
original PDF docs

Jesse Keating
original RPM packaging

Mikael Hultgren, Michael Clark, Scott Godin
major contributors

Mike Roark
Contributor SuSE packager

Artwork of this site

"I think I've already seen your look and feel somewhere"

Graphics made by Alexis Younes (Ayo73) and Amaury Amblard-Ladurantie

These 2 incredible guys have accepted to let us reuse the design they made for the not less incredible game Frozen Bubble. Many thanks guys ! Just hope Mondo Rescue will help you some days as much as I played to frozen bubble myself :-)

Don't miss Ayo's site at 73lab.com as it provides all his artworks, some of them reusable.

The Mondo Rescue Community

Read more...
http://www.mondorescue.org/about.shtml

Chapter 2. QuickStart

  • We recommend that you read this complete HOWTO. However, if you are too busy or impatient, then please use this QuickStart guide to stay out of trouble.

  • Install the tarball, RPM, or DEB mindi and mondo packages. (see Installation for more details)

  • Execute as root (type 'su -' to become root if you are not logged in as root)

    bash# mondoarchive
Choose from the list of supported backup media types. The media you will use most often are CD/DVD-+R, CD/DVD-+RW, tape, NFS and hard disk. If you want to backup/restore over a network, choose 'NFS'. If you want to backup/restore to/from a local partition or if you simply want to store the ISO images in a local directory until you have time or facilities to burn them to CD's, choose 'hard disk'. If you choose 'CD/DVD-+R[W]' or 'tape' then in general your hardware will be detected and configured for you.
If you are backing up to CD/DVD-+R[W] then Mondo will ask you if your CD burner has BurnProof technology, is inside a laptop, or is otherwise eccentric. If you are backing up to a tape streamer then you will not see this message.
How much compression do you want? None, if your tape streamer has built-in hardware compression. Maximum, if your CPU is blazingly fast. Average should do just fine for most situations.
If you want to backup the whole computer (excluding /sys and /proc, naturally) then leave this as / which is the default. Otherwise, specify subsets, (e.g. /usr/local /home ) being sure to put a space in between each path.
If you are backing up your whole computer then you might want to exclude certain directories, e.g. /shared/MP3. Please specify them in the 'exclude directories' dialog box. Please put a space in between each path, e.g. /shared/private /scratch /nfs /windows
Is your kernel sane? Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and Slackware users should in general say 'yes' because these vendors are good at producing reliable kernels. If you are using Gentoo or LFS then your kernel might be non-standard, in which case say 'no' to use Mondo's failsafe kernel (provided separately).
If you want to verify the archives after writing them to media, say 'yes' here. If you have absolute faith in your hardware and your Linux distribution, say 'no'... and a little prayer.
If you are sure you want to go ahead, say 'yes' and find something else to do while Mondo backs up your computer. If you say 'no' then you will be unceremoniously dumped at the shell prompt. :-)
The backup process will now commence. There are some pre-backup tasks to be carried out first but the backup is essentially underway. To simplify the backup process, you were asked a series of questions. Next time, if you like, you could call mondoarchive with various command-line switches to control its behavior, instead of answering a series of questions. See the man page for details.
Mondo will make a catalog of all files to be backed up. This may take up to five minutes. The list of files will be divided into sets, approximately 4 MB (before compression) of files per set. This typically takes one minute.
Mondo calls Mindi. Mindi generates bootable media image and auxiliary data disk images which are based on your existing Linux distribution and filesystem. That way, you can be sure Mondo's tools will be compatible with your existing filesystems and binaries: Mondo's tools are your tools. Mindi takes up to five minutes to run.
Finally, Mondo begins backing up your computer. This process may take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on how much data you are archiving, how fast your CPU is, how much RAM you have, and so on. It will backup your regular files and then your large files (files larger than approximately 32MB). If you have opted to verify your backups, Mondo will do that too.
  • Try to boot from the first media of the backup. Choose 'Compare Mode' by typing compare at the boot screen.

  • If you can boot, fine. If not, make a Mindi "Test" CD to checkout the compatibility of your system. (see Testing Mindi for more details). Remove the media; boot your computer as usual; execute as root

    bash# mindi
    bash# cd /var/cache/mindi

    (for CD-R)

    bash# cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=4 -eject -v mindi.iso
    bash# wodim dev=0,0,0 speed=4 -eject -v mindi.iso

    (for CD-RW)

    bash# cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=4 blank=fast -eject -v mindi.iso
    bash# wodim dev=0,0,0 speed=4 blank=fast -eject -v mindi.iso

    Reboot your system with the created Mindi CD, with the BIOS set to boot from CD. If the result is a command line in 'Expert' mode, your system checks out. Remove the CD and reboot your system.

  • If you still cannot boot from Mindi's CD then please e-mail the mondorescue mailing list for help.

When making a backup on a live system, there will always be processes running that will write out data on the system after you have made the backup and before you have made the compare, this will result in difference showing up when comparing your backup. For a full explanation and what can be done to avoid this, please read this section.

  • This QuickStart covers the ideal case. Upon receiving any system feedback/errors, read each related HOWTO section.

    Example 2-1. A test backup of your /home directory to CD-Rs using the command line

    bash# mondoarchive -OVc 4 -I /home -gF

    The 'c' means you must be writing to CD-Rs, not CD-RWs (the latter would require 'w' instead of 'c'). The '4' is the speed of your CD writer. The string after -I is the path to be backed up. The '-gF' means you are going to see the pretty yellow-on-blue screen instead of the boring white-on-black screen. :) It also means Mondo will not offer to create physical boot media for you. It is assumed that you are able to boot from the CD which Mondo has generated.

    Example 2-2. A backup of your whole filesystem to NFS using the command line

    bash# mkdir -p /mnt/nfs
    bash# mount nfs://192.168.1.28:/home/nfs /mnt/nfs
    bash# mondoarchive -OVn nfs://192.168.1.28:/home/nfs -gF[...]
    bash# umount /mnt/nfs
    bash# cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=4 -eject -v /var/cache/mindi/mindi.iso

    Note that you have to mount the NFS partition, backup to it, unmount it, and create a boot CD to allow you to restore from scratch if necessary. To reassure yourself that you will be able to restore from the NFS share even if your PC is wiped, please boot from the Mindi CD and type 'compare'. The on-screen instructions from that point on should be sufficient.

    Example 2-3. A backup of your whole filesystem to tape using the command line

    bash# mondoarchive -OVt -d /dev/st0 -9 -L -g

    In this case, we assume Syslinux is incompatible with your boot media. For some reason, some BIOSes just don't like Syslinux. If you find this to be the case for your computer, please use '-L' to force Mondo to use LILO instead of Syslinux as the boot loader for its media. (NB: This has nothing to do with which boot loader your hard drive uses.) Also, it is a good habit to specify your tape streamer with '-d <device>'. You don't usually need to but it's good to be on the safe side. Some computers call your tape streamer /dev/osst0, some call it /dev/ftape, ... Also, depending on the tape streamer model, a tape should be inserted in the tape drive before starting mondoarchive, otherwise it may not recognize the drive.


Read more, go to Chapter 2 or wherever you want...
http://www.mondorescue.org/docs/mondorescue-howto.html#QUICKSTART


Dpm

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