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mshetty@mail.com
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 14 Feb 2005
Posts: 10
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 Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:02 pm Post subject:
Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation. This what
we intend to do:
We have a m/c with 40GB disk space with Linux V3. We would like to take
a snapshot of the current installation, partition the disk and put the
snapshot in one of the partitions.
If you are aware of any such tool, kindly let us know.
Thanks and Regards,
M Shetty |
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***** charles
*nix forums addict
Joined: 30 Apr 2005
Posts: 53
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 3:25 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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<mshetty@mail.com> wrote in message
| Quote: | news:1150808530.536520.90730@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation. This what
we intend to do:
We have a m/c with 40GB disk space with Linux V3. We would like to take
a snapshot of the current installation, partition the disk and put the
snapshot in one of the partitions.
If you are aware of any such tool, kindly let us know.
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Have you looked into Ghost?
later..... |
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Larry Gagnon
*nix forums addict
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 7:29 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
| Quote: | Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
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"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page |
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Grant
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 739
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:27 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:34 -0700, Larry Gagnon <lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
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So will dd
Grant.
--
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't make eight cats pull
a sled through the snow. |
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iforone
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 28 Dec 2005
Posts: 330
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| Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 5:21 am Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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mshetty@mail.com wrote:
| Quote: | Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation. This what
we intend to do:
We have a m/c with 40GB disk space with Linux V3.
[...] |
there is no "Linux V3" -- you likely mean "ext3" FileSystem - and what
heck is "m/c" -- WAG; Master of Cermonies?
Regards |
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Nico Kadel-Garcia
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 1068
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| Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:12 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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Grant wrote:
dd is an *AWFUL* tool for this. The dd image cannot be shrunk or grown, and
it copies every single byte on the partition instead of the actual file
content. The result is a huge amount of data that does not compress well,
and actually reading all of that rather than simply reading the relevant
data makes it vastly, vastly slower. Also, if your filesystem is to change a
bit (such as switching from Reiserfs to ext3, or to slightly different forms
of ext3 such as enabling journaling and indexing for ext3 file systems),
restoring an image with dd will seriously interfere with that. You also
can't easily look inside the image to take out individual files.
No, partimage is pretty good, but if you're working with a shut down system,
why not simply use a tarball and create a new file system yourself on the
new partition? It's easy to do, and the tarball makes a handy reference
backup of your old partitions.
Now, my question is why you need to dedicate a special partition to this
image. Do you need to dual-boot to it or something? |
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Grant
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 739
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| Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 8:56 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:12:48 -0400, "Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@comcast.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Grant wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:34 -0700, Larry Gagnon
lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
So will dd
dd is an *AWFUL* tool for this.
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Nah, 'tis wonderful -- obviously, tastes vary ;)
| Quote: | The result is a huge amount of data that does not compress well,
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One zeroes free space first, compressing zeroes takes little room:
VICTIM="/dev/hdX"
mount $VICTIM /mnt/hd
dd if=/dev/zero bs=4k of=/mnt/hd/zeroes
rm /mnt/hd/zeroes
umount $VICTIM
dd if=$VICTIM | gzip > /somewhere/safe/$VICTIM.gz
| Quote: | Now, my question is why you need to dedicate a special partition to this
image. Do you need to dual-boot to it or something?
|
On a dual drive, dd'ing image across to same size partition on other
drive is a fast backup, and, the backup partition may be bootable ;)
Depends what your needs are. In general one doesn't backup OS, all
one needs is the config:
tar cvzf /somewhere/safe/config.tar.gz /etc /boot/config*
Then, cherry pick config files to a fresh install.
Grant.
--
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't make eight cats pull
a sled through the snow. |
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Nico Kadel-Garcia
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 1068
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 1:01 am Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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"Grant" <bugsplatter@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hsbj9291vfln76hp05scsom4t74qflsitn@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:12:48 -0400, "Nico Kadel-Garcia"
nkadel@comcast.net> wrote:
Grant wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:34 -0700, Larry Gagnon
lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
Hi All,
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
So will dd
dd is an *AWFUL* tool for this.
Nah, 'tis wonderful -- obviously, tastes vary ;)
The result is a huge amount of data that does not compress well,
One zeroes free space first, compressing zeroes takes little room:
VICTIM="/dev/hdX"
mount $VICTIM /mnt/hd
dd if=/dev/zero bs=4k of=/mnt/hd/zeroes
rm /mnt/hd/zeroes
umount $VICTIM
dd if=$VICTIM | gzip > /somewhere/safe/$VICTIM.gz
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You're zeroing the empty part of the partition by creating a file filled
with zerioes until it overflows? Ye ghods, you're begging to have hours
wasted. doing this. And this does nothing for the unused space remaining in
the last block of every file: that contains garbage, and that will clutter
the compression.
You've also left out the "hdparm" commands to speed performance under IDE or
ATA drives: most Linux systems default to some very slow settings, and
benefit from having "hdparm -d1c1 /dev/hdX" run.
| Quote: | Now, my question is why you need to dedicate a special partition to this
image. Do you need to dual-boot to it or something?
On a dual drive, dd'ing image across to same size partition on other
drive is a fast backup, and, the backup partition may be bootable 
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Not as fast as doing it by filesystem with tar or rsync, believe me,
especially with larger modern disks that tend to have lots of space on them.
| Quote: | Depends what your needs are. In general one doesn't backup OS, all
one needs is the config:
tar cvzf /somewhere/safe/config.tar.gz /etc /boot/config*
Then, cherry pick config files to a fresh install. |
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***** charles
*nix forums addict
Joined: 30 Apr 2005
Posts: 53
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| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 10:05 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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"Grant" <bugsplatter@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3itg92l7ae4neonqnk502g12pnqg9v96hd@4ax.com...
Ghost works with NTFS, partimage does not reliably.
later..... |
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Michael Heiming
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 1423
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:39 am Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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In comp.os.linux.setup ***** charles <shultzjrX@sbcglobal.net>:
| Quote: | "Grant" <bugsplatter@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3itg92l7ae4neonqnk502g12pnqg9v96hd@4ax.com...
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:34 -0700, Larry Gagnon
lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
So will dd
Ghost works with NTFS, partimage does not reliably.
|
'dd' will work with any filesystem, it doesn't know about any or
needs to care about.
--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 205: Quantum dynamics are affecting the transistors |
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Nico Kadel-Garcia
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 1068
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 12:43 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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Michael Heiming wrote:
| Quote: | In comp.os.linux.setup ***** charles <shultzjrX@sbcglobal.net>:
"Grant" <bugsplatter@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3itg92l7ae4neonqnk502g12pnqg9v96hd@4ax.com...
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:34 -0700, Larry Gagnon
lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
So will dd
Ghost works with NTFS, partimage does not reliably.
'dd' will work with any filesystem, it doesn't know about any or
needs to care about.
|
dd is *horribly* inefficient, since it reads and copies the contents of all
the unusued blocks as well, and doesn't allow copying the data to a
different size of new partition. |
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Jean-David Beyer
*nix forums Guru Wannabe
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 243
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:33 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:>
| Quote: | dd is *horribly* inefficient, since it reads and copies the contents of
all the unusued blocks as well, and doesn't allow copying the data to a
different size of new partition.
Not only that, to those who care about defragging partitions (I am not one |
of them), dd does not automatically do that, whereas most other copy
programs (cpio, etc.) do -- at least if you do a mkfs on the target
partition first.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 09:30:01 up 16:07, 3 users, load average: 4.21, 4.18, 4.17 |
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Michael Heiming
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 1423
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:54 pm Post subject:
Re: Tool to take snapshot of current installation
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In comp.os.linux.setup Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@comcast.net>:
| Quote: | Michael Heiming wrote:
In comp.os.linux.setup ***** charles <shultzjrX@sbcglobal.net>:
"Grant" <bugsplatter@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3itg92l7ae4neonqnk502g12pnqg9v96hd@4ax.com...
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:34 -0700, Larry Gagnon
lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:02:10 -0700, mshetty wrote:
We need a tool to take the snapshot of a Linux Installation.
"partimage" will do the job.
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
So will dd
Ghost works with NTFS, partimage does not reliably.
'dd' will work with any filesystem, it doesn't know about any or
needs to care about.
dd is *horribly* inefficient, since it reads and copies the contents of all
the unusued blocks as well, and doesn't allow copying the data to a
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Meaningless, just blow up the fs with random data, then delete
the file, before running 'dd' then pipe through gzip and the
result should be small enough.
| Quote: | different size of new partition.
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I didn't said it would be the most effective but always a good
choice since it doesn't depend on the FS used unlike any other
tool. Which is the advantage of 'dd", I wanted to point out. As
usual you couldn't get this but took the time to annoy me with
your usual blah...
--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 405: Sysadmins unavailable because they are in
a meeting talking about why they are unavailable so much. |
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