I'm just completing the first bare-metal recovery I've experienced in my
six years as a system administrator. A backplane seemed to fail and
wiped out two disks of a four-disk RAID-5 array. After replacing all the
suspect parts, I followed this process to restore the host:
--Installed an IDE hard drive and configured to boot before the SCSI
RAID drives
--Installed Debian 3.1r3 on the IDE drive.
--Mounted the SCSI array and partitioned as the original was
--Manually examined my backup tapes (tar) and assembled a list of the
tape file to restore, in the proper order.
--Restored the data to the proper partitions on the SCSI array.
--Powered down the host, removed the IDE drive, and booted using Debian
CD and 'rescue root=/dev/sda2'. This worked correctly.
--Ran lilo to restore the MBR. After removing CD, 'shutdown -r' seems to
work correctly.
I thought that after all this, I'd be done. However, I'm discovering
pockets of files and directories that seem to have never made it to the
backup tapes in the first place. Some examples:
--/service/tinydns, dnscache, qmail-send, ... All these were soft links
to the files, so from the recent discussion, they wouldn't have been
backed up by tar. Is there a recommended procedure for dealing with
this? Would using 'dump' have prevented this?
--/var/qmail/* Directories below this level, such as control and bin,
exist, but they're empty
--/var/lib/dpkg/* (This is frustrating my efforts to restore this Debian
system with 'aptitude' or 'apt-get.')
--/var/spool/cron/crontabs Empty
--/var/amanda/* (All my amanda database information is missing.)
One common thread is that all of these directories are in /var/.
However, other files in this branch, such as /var/lib/apt/lists/* seem
to be restored just fine.
I don't understand why these files and directories are missing. My
disklist includes:
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$ grep -i center disklist
centernet sda2 tar #/
centernet sda14 tar #/boot
centernet sda3 tar #/usr
centernet sda5 tar #/opt/analog/logdata
centernet sda6 tar #/var/www/centernet/htdocs
centernet sda7 tar #/var/lib/mysql
centernet sda9 tar #/var/www/centernet/logs
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$
This matches the /etc/fstab on this host:
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options>
<dump> <pass>
/dev/sda2 / ext2
errors=remount-ro 0 1
<snip>
/dev/sda14 /boot ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda3 /usr ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda5 /opt/analog/logdata ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda6 /var/www/centernet/htdocs ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda7 /var/lib/mysql ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda9 /var/www/centernet/logs ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda8 /dumps/amanda ext2 defaults
0 2
/dev/sda10 /dumps/amanda2 ext2 defaults
0 2
amanda@cn2:/etc/amanda/DBackup$
Here's what I think are the relevant portions of amanda.conf:
define dumptype global {
comment "Global definitions"
}
define dumptype tar {
global
program "GNUTAR"
}
I don't understand why these files and directories didn't end up on the
root (sda2) tape, like I expected.
Can anyone show me an error that I made, or did something go wrong that
wasn't supposed to occur?
To make this work more smoothly the next time, six years from now, when
I have to do another bare-metal backup, what should I change?
Thanks for your advice and suggestions.
-Kevin
Kevin Zembower
Internet Services Group manager
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
410-659-6139
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