Thank you Kern, Arno, and Erich for your responses. Please forgive my impatience. I need to be mindful that not everyone in the world lives between the Eastern and Pacific (US) timezones. I thought it was an unusual question that not many had experienced, and certainly not on the short list of the key players. I was obviously wrong.
I believe this is an exceptional application, and appreciate all that has been invested by some many personally and technically. I'm definitely an open source advocate. Projects and list responses like yours are the reason. I was certain I was just technically ignorant. I'll take all the input and come up with a solution for my environment. Again, thank you all for your time, responses, and the substance. Don. On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 10:59 +0200, Kern Sibbald wrote: > Hello, > > On Tuesday 12 September 2006 01:39, Don MacArthur wrote: > > Sorry to be so chatty- > > > > "Failure": when I eject the bacula boot cd, restart the server, after > > the POST when (I'm guessing) it tries to read from the drives I'm > > presented with a blank screen and a blinking underscore cursor in the > > upper left corner of the display. > > > > Going to plan "b"; load the OS and bacula from scratch, and restore from > > there. > > > > I've seen no response to my posts, so don't be shy. Or, if you know of > > someone who might have some ideas please ask them to review the posts. > > This is just to let you know that I *have* been following all your posts as > well as those of everyone else, and in my case, it is not that I am shy, but > that at the moment I am totally overloaded trying to finish off the current > Bacula release. > > Concerning the rescue disk, here are a number of points: > 1. Most if not all of the discussion on what I have been doing (a lot) has > been on the bacula-devel list. > 2. I am totally convinced that Bacula needs a good rescue CD on the ideas of > the current rescue CD, but the current implementation is essentially dead > (see below). > 2. In my opinion, the old rescue code that you are using worked only > moderately well on Fedora systems up to and including FC4. In FC5 and in > most other Linux distros, it is simply broken. It was at this point that I > realized that writing a general rescue CD for Bacula is a full time project > for one person, and is not my preferred activity (I prefer adding features to > Bacula and improving the code). > 3. The problem is that booting an OS and getting all the RAID/LVM, and 20 > other two and three letter thingies working is first difficult (which I can > handle), but above all significantly different on each distro (which I cannot > handle). > 4. I've come up with a short term strategy, which I have implemented (almost) > and a longer term strategy (actually two different strategies). > > Short term strategy (95% implemented): > 1. Used mkcdrec (3rd party open source package) as the basis of the booting > and "hook" into its code to get the Bacula stuff on the CD. The advantage is > that mkcdrec shares most of my ideas (i.e. build a rescue cd using *your* > kernel and data from *your* system). The author of mkcdrec has been very > kind and has integrated all the changes I have sent him that make it easy for > Bacula to insert its own stuff (bacula-fd, bacula-fd.conf, ...) onto the CD. > This code is as I say 95% complete (it boots and the Bacula stuff is there) > -- there are still lots of little details to clean up, and NO documentation > as of the current time. The big advantage is that it is likely to boot on > many more systems than just the ones I have. > > If anyone is willing to test this code (I think you are likely to get much > farther than with the old 1.8.x rescue), please let me know, and I'll create > a first cut documentation and tell you how to get the code. It would be a > *big* help to have testers, but I have to specify that my priority is getting > Bacula 1.39.x stabilized and released ... > > Longer term stragegy (designed in my head 5-10% implemented): > 1. Longer term, mkcdrec is going away because the author has a new much more > flexible project (released to Source Forge) called rear (Relax and Recover). > > 2. I haven't yet had the time to look at rear in detail to see if it is far > enough along to be used by Bacula -- the authors kindly let me provide them > with input at the design phase, so they are aware of what Bacula needs. > So this is a possibility. > > 3. It seems to me that there are two possibly better solutions to the problem: > a. Most distros now have rather serious "rescue" modes of booting their > installation disks (by serious, I mean they do a very good job of > getting any configuration booted, and they have a lot of tools). SuSE > even has tools that will check and repare a whole filesystem (beyond > just fsck). The problem is that these rescue disks do not have Bacula. > b. Most distros have good scripts to create a initrd and an iso boot image. > > 4. I believe that it would be quite possible, and not too complicated to > (referring to a and b above): > a. Remaster a distro's rescue disk and add Bacula specific data (i.e. > bacula-fd, bacula-fd.conf, some scripts ... I am leaning towards > implementing this. > b. Making a collection of scripts for each distro, and modify them > slightly to add the hooks for Bacula to insert its data when running > those scripts (much like I did for mkcdrec). > c. It would be nice to convince the distros to include those hooks > in their distributed scripts -- this would make it much easier to > support future versions. > > > Bottom line: > - Short term, I need another couple of days of work to complete the > integration of Bacula with mkcdrec, which should provide us with a viable > short term solution. Any persons interested in testing please let me know > copying only the bacula-devel list, please. > > - Longer term: I think the best solution will be 4a (remaster standard distro > rescue disks). The advantage is that the distro maintainers maintain these > disks and ensure that they boot on their system, and they often add many very > useful goodies that we would automatically get. > > I cannot rule out using rear or simply hooking into distro mkintrd and > mkrescue scripts. > > I hope this explains where we are for the Bacula rescue CDROM. > > Best regards, > > Kern > > > > > > > Again, TIA. > > > > On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 15:22 -0600, Don MacArthur wrote: > > > I just got my second failure to recover. This isn't a production > > > server, but I need to know this'll work when I need it. > > > > > > If you have done a bare-metal recovery using the rescue disk, I would > > > appreciate feedback on how it went, and what challenges were > > > experienced. > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > > > On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 09:52 -0600, Don MacArthur wrote: > > > > Also, I get the following errors during the make all... > > > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > > Begin making LVM formatting script(s) ... > > > > Done building scripts. > > > > ./make_rescue_disk > > > > if test ! x"/usr/sbin" = x ; then \ > > > > ./copy_static_bacula "/usr/sbin"/static-bacula-fd "/usr/sbin"/bacula- > > > > fd.conf ; \ > > > > elif test ! -f ../rpm_release ; then \ > > > > ./make_static_bacula /root/bacula-1.38.11 ; \ > > > > fi > > > > cp: cannot create regular file `bin/bacula-fd': No such file or > > > > directory > > > > Warning!!! /usr/sbin/static-bacula-fd not found. !!! > > > > cp: cannot stat `/usr/sbin/bacula-fd.conf': No such file or directory > > > > Warning!!! /usr/sbin/bacula-fd.conf not found. !!! > > > > ./copy_to_roottree > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > > > > > > Again, TIA. > > > > > > > > On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 08:27 -0600, Don MacArthur wrote: > > > > > First, thanks to so many who have contributed to creating a robust and > > > > > elegant backup solution. It is the only one I could find that has > > > > > enterprise-class features, and backs up all my OS's (Win, Lin, OS X). > > > > > > > > > > rh: es4 2.6.9.42.0.2.el > > > > > rescue: 1.8.6 > > > > > bacula: 1.38.11 > > > > > both sources located under /root > > > > > > > > > > My task is to prove the restore process. I'm trying to use the boot > cd. > > > > > If I should switch to something else that is better, please point me > in > > > > > the right direction. My windows restore process went very well, no > > > > > hitches. I'm working on my Linux servers, and OS X is next. > > > > > > > > > > I've run through the process a couple of times and assume some error > on > > > > > my part is the cause of the problem. > > > > > > > > > > I've tried it with and without bacula-fd ./configured as static. > > > > > > > > > > In my first attempt I compiled non-static: > > > > > 1. start-network failed because the mask was 255.0.0.0 on a 192.168 > > > > > network, and no gateway. > > > > > 2. there was no bacula-fd.conf anywhere after booting. To determine > > > > > this, from / I ran ls -Rl|grep bacula-fd. > > > > > 3. hard drive partition didn't in that the last partition created > > > > > exceeded the available space on the disk. > > > > > > > > > > I recompiled the fd from /root/bacula-1.38.11/ with: > > > > > ./configure --bindir=/usr/bin --sbindir=/usr/sbin --enable-static-fd > -- > > > > > enable-client-only > > > > > > > > > > "make all" created an image that used the bacula-fd.conf from the > > > > > bacula-1.38.11/src folder, instead of the one from /etc/bacula. > > > > > > > > > > Booting this cd and running start-network again set a network config > > > > > with the wrong mask, and no gateway. > > > > > > > > > > So, before I spend another few days trying to patch this, can anyone > see > > > > > what I'm doing wrong? > > > > > > > > > > TIA, > > > > > Don. > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, > security? > > > > > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your > > > > > job > easier > > > > > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache > Geronimo > > > > > > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > Bacula-users mailing list > > > > > Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, > security? > > > > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job > easier > > > > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache > Geronimo > > > > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Bacula-users mailing list > > > > Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? > > > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job > easier > > > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo > > > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Bacula-users mailing list > > > Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? > > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job > easier > > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo > > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > > _______________________________________________ > > Bacula-users mailing list > > Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
