DeviceImage Tools

[cgetty]

Hi
I have my hard drive split up.
hda1 = win XP
hda2 = gentoo linux
How could I just back up hda1 ?

Also if hda1 is a 5 gig partition and I’m only using 2 gigs dose Device-Image back just the data or the whole 5 gigs?

Sorry for the dumb questions, new to linux. :oops:

Clark

[jurij]

[quote="cgetty"]Hi
I have my hard drive split up.
hda1 = win XP
hda2 = gentoo linux
How could I just back up hda1 ?

Also if hda1 is a 5 gig partition and I’m only using 2 gigs dose Device-Image back just the data or the whole 5 gigs?

Sorry for the dumb questions, new to linux. :oops:

Clark[/quote]

Hi Clark,
first, there are no dumb questions - there are only dumb answers !

Yes you can backup you partition /dev/hda1... See the docu on our web-page there are some very simple examples. In these examples you should only only replace /dev/hda through /dev/hda1. Please note, the mode of operation of zsplit is other than that of partimage. Zsplit stores all information from the stored partition. It means it will store all 5 gigs. But after compressing the whole file will be smaller, depending on file system and the compression density you defined.
The restoring of the backuped partiton should go to the partition of the same size, this is very important.

Regards,
Jurij

[cgetty]

Hi Jurij

Just reformatted PC just windows installed. The HD was a 40 gig, xp consumed about 2.3 gigs. I plugged a 60 gig (empty) usb drive and booted the PC up with Damn Small Linux. With zsplit on the 60 gig usb drive I ran the following.

root@1[sdb]# ./zsplit /dev/hda2 <- that's where XP was.
zsplit: start of operation
zsplit: file/device-image cannot be splitted, the size of chunk is unknown, in bytes: 134598730

In the end zsplit reported success. And I had a compressed file on sdb. I guessing it worked?


On another PC with an 70 HD with about 18 gig being used. I plugged a 60 gig (empty) usb drive and booted the PC up with Damn Small Linux. With zsplit on the 60 gig usb drive I ran the following.

root@1[sdb]# ./zsplit /dev/hda2
zsplit: start of operation

This was the result below.

zsplit: file/device-image cannot be splitted, the size of chunk is unknown, in bytes: 134598730
File size limit exceeded

Then I tried this on the same PC I tried this.
root@1[sdb]# ./zsplit -s 4.5G -N WinXP_bkp -d /dev/hda2

Got the same result

File size limit exceeded

log file results

13-04-2005 22:05:05 zsplit: start of operation.
13-04-2005 22:05:05 zsplit: compression level selected: 6.
13-04-2005 22:05:05 zsplit: /dev/hda2 will be splitted and compressed, approximate size of chunks in bytes: 4831838208.

there was a 4 gig sized file on the usb drive WinXP_bkp??

Should I be using a larger drive to back up to, more the the 60 gig?

I don't mean to be hard headed but what am I missing ?
thanks
Clark

[jurij]

Hi Clark,

we should separately deal with all your problems.

Case 1:

You have 40 gig source device and 60 gig target device.
On the target device you wish to make an image from the partition /dev/hda2.
You start zsplit from a partition on the device /dev/sdb (60 gig) I think the size of this partition is equal or bigger than 40 gig. It is ok. You start then: ./zsplit /dev/hda2
You have all requirements fulfiled and at the end of operation you have got an image file and
success message from zsplit.

At the beginning of operation you have got a message:
"file/device-image cannot be splitted, the size of chunk is unknown, in bytes: 134598730"
This information explains you that zsplit has no information about splitting (you have not used -s option).
Therefore zsplit will only compress the output image and it will not split it up.
This one-file-image (from /dev/hda2) you have got as a result of operation of zsplit in this case.
The part "in bytes: 134598730" is a little bug in program, zsplit cannot know the chunk size in this case..., it has been fixed already.

Case 2:

You have on the other PC 70 gig HD (is it gight? you write 70 HD) as sorce device,
and 60 gig device as target for the image file. This situation is unsafe because,
before you create an image you should know that the end size of output file will be exactly 60 gig or smaller.
Farthermore you should be sure that your target partition (were your image files will be collected) fulfiles the same requirements.
Here you have a message from the OS that "File size limit exceeded".
I would say you have not enaugh space on the target partition. The image file is bigger as free space on the /dev/sdb(x) partition.

If for this situation you would start zsplit as follows:
./zsplit -d /dev/hda2
What you see in the debug.log file ?

Case 3:

The initial requirements are not fulfiled as in case 2.
But now you start zsplit in the splitting mode:

./zsplit -s 4.5G -N WinXP_bkp -d /dev/hda2

It would be very helpful if you could show the whole information from the debug.log file.
But as I can guess, you have definitely a space problem on the target partition /dev/sdb(x)
Therefore you have got one chunk of 4.5 gig in size it is ok, but creation of next image-chunks was
aborted. As I mentioned before it would be helpfull to see the whole info from the debug.log file.
But what I see now in cases 2 and 3 there is a space problem. You should be sure that the partition
which you use to collect image file should be same or bigger in size then the partition which you make
an image from.

Regards,
Jurij

[cgetty]

Hi Jurij
Thank´s for being patient with me.
Today I brought an empty 160 gig usb drive. I´ll try it again.

I think I´ll also try restoring the data to see it it works the way I hope.
I´ll try restoring a few XP back ups and a few linux. The hardware is different so I expect some problems when I try to run the restored data on a different PC.

If it works the way I want it to, my next test will be to back up and restore over the network. Hope my IT people don´t have heart failure over that. Well see.

Thanks again for your help
Clark

[ioGL64NX]

If you have a other motherboard / vendor of hardware that Windows XP or 2k and others fails to boot..expecially with ide or SATA (Raid) drivers.
If it totally different it deffinitly fails on boot then!

Hope you have luck.
P.S)Don't hurt you IT people, it is much work to keep clients up and running

[cgetty]

Hi
Please excuse my terms in explaining my concerns, I’m new to linux, coming from a Windoze world.

I compressed a Linux partition /dev/hda2. It was a 10 gig partition that was about 60% full.

Every thing seem to work ok according to the feed back after the program (zsplit) ran. There was one file created the size was 4.7 gig.

I renamed the file to give it a meaningful name that I could remember later. Example: BlackBox_hda2_Jollix_10gig.spl.zp

I wanted to try to restore it to another box with a 40 gig HD that was empty. There is one partition on it /dev/hda1

What command should I use ?

P.S. I did review the instruction before I posted this message, still don't get it sorry. And made a few unsuccessful attempts to restore the data
Thanks
Clark

[jurij]

Hi Clark,

You have got your partition backed up, it is a half of success!
Now I will explain you how to reach the whole success in backup/restore routine.

Zsplit, making images, creates files which are named following a definite convention. The name of the file includes information for the unzsplit that this file is a zsplit-image and the current number of this file is the sequential number which should be taken into account during uncompress and glue files together. So the name of file, better to say the part of the name such as _0.spl.zp is very important one in order to get this file restored.

1. Rename your image file: BlackBox_hda2_Jollix_10gig.spl.zp to BlackBox_hda2_Jollix_10gig_0.spl.zp

The same name you can get if you include this output name as option in the command line for zsplit: instead of ./zsplit /dev/hda2 issue the following command: ./zsplit -N BlackBox_hda2_Jollix_10gig /dev/hda2

Suppose you wish to restore your image to the same partition /dev/hda2.

Start unzsplit in the directory which contains your image-file:

./unzsplit -D /dev/hda2 BlackBox_hda2_Jollix_10gig

That’s all..! You should get your partition /dev/hda2 restored.

Please notice, if you restore your image to a new device (harddisk). You should remember that it does not have a valid MBR (master boot record). So consequently you will be unable to boot this restored partition.

If this is a case you should additionally restore MBR to your new device.
How to do this..
suppose you start all procedures from the device which contains your backup image:
1. save your MBR record from the original device: dd if=/dev/hda of=backup_hda.mbr count=1 bs=512
2. restore your MBR to a new device: dd if= backup_hda.mbr of=/dev/had

After that you will be able to boot your restored partition.
I hope this will help you in your experiments.

Regards,
Jurij

[Guest]

Hi
I just want to thank both of you for taking the time to help me.

I think I finally have the saving & restoring part under my belt now.

Clark

[Guest]

[quote="cgetty"]
Also if hda1 is a 5 gig partition and I’m only using 2 gigs dose Device-Image back just the data or the whole 5 gigs?
[/quote]

If you need a clever backup program, I would suggest partimage, or even better the LRS http://lrs.linbox.org which has now support for for LVM, XFS, ...