PDA

View Full Version : [ubuntu] restore backup image



butterman
May 16th, 2008, 02:58 PM
I need assistance restoring a backup disk image created using partimage and these instructions (http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partimage). I attempted to upgrade an old P3 server running dapper but hosed the machine (kernel panic). Now I want to restore my dapper backup image.

So far I've done the following:

connected an external USB drive to the old P3 server that contains the backup images
booted the old P3 server using a rescue cd (which includes partimage).
noticed numerous buffer i/o errors during a long boot process
entered "df" to check whether the external drive mounted automatically--it didn't
ran:

mkdir /mnt/sdc1

mount -t ext3 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1
Ran partimage

partimage
Selected sda1 to restore and followed these instructions (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Backing_Up).
After identifying the image to be restored, I hit F5 to continue.
Partimage terminates with the following error: "invalid compression level for /mnt/sdc1/atlas-backup-image/atlas-sda1.000" This partition is about 3G.

Are my partitions too big?

Part II - I purchased a new duo core machine and plan to migrate the server settings from the P3. Can I restore these images on the new machine? Should I try upgrading the P3 again before migrating? Should I do a clean install of 8.04 on the new machine and then try to migrate the application settings?

Pumalite
May 16th, 2008, 03:07 PM
This might help:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partimage

butterman
May 16th, 2008, 04:28 PM
That link happens to be the one I used to create the backup image. The problem I have now is restoring it. The only instructions for restoring the image are: "The restore process is very similar except that you choose the Restore partition from an image file option when PartImage launches." I did this in my attempt to restore the backup image but I'm getting an "invalid compression" error.

It seems that I'm not the only one with this problem. This link (http://www.partimage.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=213) suggests that just renaming the image with a .gz extension will overcome the error while others say this is a bug in partimage for partitions over 2GB.

butterman
May 17th, 2008, 02:59 PM
Okay, here's the solution:

1. boot with system rescue cd
2. create mount point

mkdir /mnt/sdc1
3. mount external usb drive

mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1
4. rename the backup image

mv atlas-sda1.000 atlas-sda1.000.gz
5. restore the backup image

gunzip -c atlas-sda1.000.gz | partimage restore /dev/sda1 stdin

This link (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Backing_Up) says the mbr must be restored separately. I tried restoring the mbr using the same technique but got an invalid compression error.


gunzip -c atlas-sda1.000.gz | partimage restmbr /dev/sda1 stdin

Even with executing this command successfully, the machine rebooted properly.