rear/rear

Relax-and-Recover - Linux bare metal disaster recovery and system migration solution (cfr. mksysb, ignite)

Andrew Wienecke

@awienecke_gitlab

Hello, I've run into an interesting issue, trying to create a full system backup on iso, but the system is not actually backing up to the iso, it's just a standard 64MB iso, and there is at least 300MB of stuff in /opt. Additionally, I attempted to provide the iso:/// backup_url, but nothing I do seems to affect it. Am I missing something/some kind of configuration?

Andrew Wienecke

@awienecke_gitlab

@chupacabraz_gitlab Supposedly it can be done, you can actually copy the luks vm's /var/lib/rear/layout/disklayout.conf (just run a backup of a blank machine that matches where you're migrating to) to the non-luks one and place it in /etc/rear/ and run the backup... again, supposedly

it should then restore in a similar manner

untested, but maybe worth a shot

Gratien D'haese

@gdha

hi @daebenji , i have tried to do what you advised but it still failed, below are my config for both ~/.ssh/config and local.conf
$ cat .ssh/config
Host 172.16.10.17
HostName 172.16.10.17
User sftpuser
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
$ sudo cat /etc/rear/local.conf
OUTPUT=ISO
BACKUP=NETFS
OUTPUT_URL=sftp://172.16.10.17/home/sftpuser/
BACKUP_URL=iso:///backup/
BACKUP_PROG_EXCLUDE=("${BACKUP_PROG_EXCLUDE[@]}" '/media' '/var/tmp' '/var/crash')

@wellysunardy Did you exchange your public SSH key with the remote system (add it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file)?

Andrew Wienecke

@awienecke_gitlab

chroot /mnt/local /bin/bash

that fails with "chroot: failed to run command '/bin/bash': no such file or directory"

despite file /mnt/local/bin/bash shows it to be an ELF Executable

Andrew Wienecke

@awienecke_gitlab

oh, /mnt/local/{lib,lib64} are empty.... why would that be

Andrew Wienecke

@awienecke_gitlab

It turns out they are symlinks on the core system, making them broken on the ISO if backing up to them, has anyone run into this? is there a known solution

mattiscb

@mattiscb

Hello everyone! I seem to be unable to create a Recovery USB-thumbdrive that ist secure-boot compatible. The System I want to backup is Ubuntu 20.04 but the little HP ProDesk thing ist telling me the thumbdrive is not authenticated to boot. I tried several SECURE_BOOT_BOOTLOADER- paths, none works. Anyone here who can maybe help me out of my misery?

daebenji

@daebenji

was the drive recongnised by the bios?

mattiscb

@mattiscb

yes

it dispaly as UEFI SanDisk in the F9-Boot Menu

daebenji

@daebenji

are you using legacy boot or uefi?

mattiscb

@mattiscb

I was trying uefi boot

daebenji

@daebenji

maybe you should give legacy boot a try

mattiscb

@mattiscb

i am trying at the moment. but that means i have to disable secure/uefi boot on 30+ machines, restore the backup and enable it again.

daebenji

@daebenji

how should i know?

mattiscb

@mattiscb

You couldn't know. that's why i told you =) is there somewhere a comprehensive document telling me how i could create a working usb backup/rescue-system with uefi an secure boot from an ubuntu20.04?

Gratien D'haese

@gdha

It turns out they are symlinks on the core system, making them broken on the ISO if backing up to them, has anyone run into this? is there a known solution
@awienecke_gitlab seems serious - please open an issue for this

mattiscb

@mattiscb

thanks daebenji, i got legacy stick working. better than nothing atm

pyfan1

@pyfan1

Is there any way to get NTFS support in the recovery environment? I happily sent the tar file to an NTFS drive. Now when I boot the rescue disk and try to mount that drive, it says the NTFS filesystem type is unknown. If it makes any difference, I'm running CentOS 7. ReAR 2.4

kevanlanister735

@kevanlanister735

I have performed a rear -d -v mkbackup using a local.conf that has BACKUP_URL and OUTPUT_URL as a local file:/// in the home directory of my CentOS7 box (because home was a large partition that had lots of space)

it seems like the .tar file generated does not include my /home/* directories

is this because my backup file location was in /home?

is there any way around this if I need to create the backup local to the box and that is the only partition available?

kevanlanister735

@kevanlanister735

If a rear -d -v mkbackup is interrupted, will rear continue where it left off? do i need to enable rsync backup to make that happen?

SeyyedKhandon

@SeyyedKhandon

in this topic https://askubuntu.com/questions/1295016/how-to-create-full-backup-bootable-iso-file-using-relax-and-recover-app

I'm going to use rear for a full backup with one iso

but everything which i did, was the generating a 250mb iso and a 1.7gb tar.gz

What I want is just 1 bootable ISO which contains the whole backup of my current centos 7 (with its all configs and installed apps) that can be write later in a bootable matter on USB stick and be installed on other machines.

how should i do this?

Gratien D'haese

@gdha

in this topic https://askubuntu.com/questions/1295016/how-to-create-full-backup-bootable-iso-file-using-relax-and-recover-app

Why not make a bootable USB stick and write backup to it as well? See http://relax-and-recover.org/documentation/usecases

SeyyedKhandon

@SeyyedKhandon

The problem with only usb solution is the backup is available as the usb is available, so I cant send it to anyone to use it.

SeyyedKhandon

@SeyyedKhandon

Isn't there any solution ?

SeyyedKhandon

@SeyyedKhandon

After struggling with this need and the problem, I Asked it on the rear/rear#2530, and the answer as in the below:
it will generate 1 bootable iso in /var/lib/rear/output/rear-YOURSYSTEMNAME.iso

OUTPUT=ISO
OUTPUT_URL=null
BACKUP=NETFS
BACKUP_URL="iso:///backup"

And you can install it where ever you want. Please read the issue carefully.
In my experience, if the automatic restore failed, you should manually restore it as the rear video says:

https://relax-and-recover.org/

rear recovery steps:

rear username: root

command to restore: rear recover

SeyyedKhandon

@SeyyedKhandon

update

if you want to generate .iso straight into your usb stick, you can do as below steps:

# mkdir /other
# umount /dev/sdb1
# mount /dev/sdb1 /other

OUTPUT=ISO
ISO_DIR=/other
OUTPUT_URL=null
BACKUP=NETFS
BACKUP_URL="iso:///backup"

thanks to @jsmeix

more details on rear/rear#2530

wbrells

@wbrells

I'm just starting to use Relax-and-Recover with Mint 20.04, so I expect I'm doing something that is obviously wrong. I used the command git clone https://github.com/rear/rear.git to install Relax-and-Recover, and that went fine. However, when I tried to format a USB stick with the commands: cd rear/ and sudo usr/sbin/rear format /dev/subc (subc is the usb stick) the command fails and the log file shows an error message of "Failed to create msdos partition table". I've tried different USB sticks and get the same message. Can someone suggest what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks!

wbrells

@wbrells

Problem solved! The USB stick needed to be UMOUNTed before it could be formatted. The error message could have been more helpful, but I was able to successfully format the USB stick and start the backup process. However, backing up to the USB stick was so slow that I gave up after an hour or so. It would probably have been faster if backing up to a hard disk, but I decided to switch over to a different program. I've settled on using Macrium Reflect's bootable Rescue Media which seems to be working well for me.

sway-vmware

@sway-vmware

Hi, I'd like to use an USB drive to store backup.tar.gz, but when I tried to mount the USB drive for restore, the rescue OS complains that ntfs filesystem unknown. What is the best way to add ntfs modules to the rescue ISO?

Gratien D'haese

@gdha

Hi, I'd like to use an USB drive to store backup.tar.gz, but when I tried to mount the USB drive for restore, the rescue OS complains that ntfs filesystem unknown. What is the best way to add ntfs modules to the rescue ISO?

Add MODULES=( 'all_modules' ) to the /etc/rear/local.conf file

sway-vmware

@sway-vmware

thanks @gdha , is there a trick to get the rescue iso bootable after adding the MODULES line? I have upgraded rear to 2.6 but the rescue would hang after selecting Recover from the menu

cvijayvinoth

@cvijayvinoth

How to add proxy information while restore the data using iso image ( medium us RSYNC)?

Gratien D'haese

@gdha

thanks @gdha , is there a trick to get the rescue iso bootable after adding the MODULES line? I have upgraded rear to 2.6 but the rescue would hang after selecting Recover from the menu

@sway-vmware Try first to get a prompt from the rescue medium after booting. From the command line you can also start a recover easely.

Jonathan Shepherd

@jon_sco_gitlab

Hi All, I'm looking for a bit of advice. I'm currently evaluating this software and want to start using it to move a few old physical Linux servers to our virtual environment. I've run through all the steps and have created an ISO image on a central server. However, when I try to recover the ISO into my virtual environment it always errors with the following: ERROR could not find Directory /boot/grub. So it does sound like it's not recreating the boot partition correctly when restoring from the ISO. Any ideas?

pcmurphy101

@pcmurphy101

I am attempting use REAR 2.4 on a HP DL380 G10 running RHEL 8.3. The problem I am having is that when I boot this UEFI system with the ISO burned on a DVD the system does not recognize the DVD as a bootable. Any suggestions as to what I could be doing wrong?

Where communities thrive

People

Repo info

Activity

rear recovery steps:

update