Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] Bacula Enhancements Request

2010-03-17 06:14:53
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Bacula Enhancements Request
From: Matija Nalis <mnalis+bacula AT CARNet DOT hr>
To: bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:11:42 +0100
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 02:40:05PM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On 03/16/10 14:15, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> > On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, Bob Cousins wrote:
> >> - Explicit capturing of boot and partitioning information for easier 
> >> bare metal restores. (Bare metal restores should be easy and fast for 
> >> all OSes, but that is easier said than done.)
> > 
> > Do you mean backing up the MBR?  That might be nice alright.
> 
> Doing this portably is actually a rather difficult problem because there
> are so many different partitioning schemes and partition table formats
> out there.  It's a mess.

well, yeah, it would probably best to handle this via wrapper. (like
for example mtx-changer script) as then only such a wrapper needs to
be modified for specific systems.

Under GNU/Linux at least there is sfdisk(8), and one can easily do a
partition dump with "sfdisk -d /dev/sda > somefile" and restore it
with "sfdisk /dev/sda < somefile". 

If there was such a wrapper, each distribution could tailor it to its
own needs to allow (majority of) its users to have a hassle-free
out-of-the-box working environment.

> Clean bare-metal restore has been a feature that's been worked on since
> almost the earliest days of Bacula, and there still isn't a clean single
> solution, precisely *because* it's a complex problem.

That is, it is not that hard to do it, but it is hard to do it
automatically -- the cause of problem being exactly high portability
of bacula to different environments.

-- 
Matija Nalis
Odjel racunalno-informacijskih sustava i servisa                                
                                                      
Hrvatska akademska i istrazivacka mreza - CARNet 
Josipa Marohnica 5, 10000 Zagreb
tel. +385 1 6661 616, fax. +385 1 6661 766
www.CARNet.hr

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