On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 04:32:04PM -0400, Ronald Vincent Vazquez wrote:
>
> On Fri, July 21, 2006 3:57 pm, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 02:44:30PM -0400, Ronald Vincent Vazquez wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello:
> >>
> >> Here is what we have done at our site. We re-mastered DSL (Damn Small
> >> Linux) with all the tools we need (and some we won't ever need). The
> >> bootable CD includes: ssh, netcat, etc., SCSI modules for our card, raid
> >> stuff, and most important, Amanda client.
> >>
> >> As a test, we trashed the drives on the backup server rendering it
> >> un-bootable and after the restoration a few minutes later the server was
> >> running again. What I did was, boot from the CD, fdisk the drives,
> >> create
> >> the file systems, enable mirroring, mount the partitions, and restore
> >> the
> >> last level 0 to the drive. I didn't have to mess with any incrementals
> >> because part of my test included a level 0 right before destroying the
> >> server. The only other thing I did was to copy /dev from the CD to the
> >> drive and mount /proc in order to install lilo on the hard drives.
> >>
> >> In short, if you could invest the time in creating a "Live CD" with
> >> amanda
> >> client now, it will pay good dividends later. You would need nothing
> >> more
> >> than the CD and a cup of coffee.
> >>
> >
> > Great sounding system. Couple of questions if I might:
> >
> > 1. The resulting live CD, is it limited to the restoration of a single
> > host, presumably the amanda server. And within that limit, if it
> > exists, is the live CD in anyway tied to specific amanda configs?
> >
> > 2. Over the years/months, what sorts of things would necessitate a
> > rebuild of the CD? Change of OS release? Update of any specific
> > packages on the host? hardware changes? amanda config changes?
> > amanda updates?
> >
> > 3. How scriptable might creating such a CD be? I'm thinking of two
> > scenarios. An "automated" build would be useful if regular remakes
> > of the CD were needed (question 2 above). And it would be a nice
> > distributable script. Give instructions for how to get DSL and
> > how to put together any of the extra pieces (netcat, etc.) into a
> > form/location the script can use. Then setup a config file that
> > says where the pieces are and anyother params needed.
> >
> > After they've done those steps, even neophytes of building a live CD,
> > might be able to run the script and create a .iso to burn as their
> > rescue/recovery disk.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > jon
> > --
> > Jon H. LaBadie jon AT jgcomp DOT com
> > JG Computing
> > 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159
> > Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
> >
> Hello Jon:
>
> 1. Actually, the resulting CD is universal, we could restore any of our
> x86 machines here. Our CD displays a prompt where you can choose form a
> series of options: 1. Restore a cluster node, 2. Restore the backup server
> itself (will drive the changer), 3. Restore any of our servers, 4. Obtain
> a "bash" shell. All you do to restore any of the other servers is
> configure your ethernet interface and ssh to the backup server or use
> netcat.
>
> 2. The only reason I see which will force us to re-master the CD soon will
> be to upgrade amanda itself from vers 2.4.X to 2.5.X. Other than that all
> I can think is that you may want your "universal" CD to perform a new
> task. In that case, another 20 cents and 5 minutes of your time... ;-)
>
> 3. The process of creating the disk can be turned into a script very
> easily. For the software we add to the CD, we are compiling it on another
> machine and then moving the binaries and libaries to the chrooted
> environment manually.
>
> Let me see if I have enough time this weekend to "cook" a document in
> order to share our efforts.
>
>
That would be great.
I have a spare box totally unused with a small disk.
I'll try to use it to trash and recreate from a live CD
based on your docs.
--
Jon H. LaBadie jon AT jgcomp DOT com
JG Computing
4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159
Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
|
