CentOS - Apr 2005 - Does CentOS has problems with Norton Ghost 2003 images?

Hello all

We have two very important workstations dedicated to tasks of
development and investigation.  At the moment we have installed a dual
boot platform with CentOS 4.0 and Windows XP Proffessional SP2.  In
order to do backups of these machines we need to create an image with
Norton Ghost 2003.

We have worked with Ghost during several years with different
platforms (Red Hat, White Box Linux, Windows) without problems but now
we are facing problems with our CentOS. When the creation of the image
reaches approximately 50% in BOTH machines the Norton Ghost aborts
with an error.  Using the "force cloning" option of Ghost we managed
to complete the creation of the image, nevertheless when recovering it
we got this error: GRUB GRUB (the machine never booted)

Then we tried to boot CentOS from a floppy and linux rescue and it
didn't work.  Two days ago we made and we recovered images to those
same discs with White Box and WinXP without problems.

Given our experience with Norton Ghost, we considered seriously that
the problem is CentOS.  We did many tests to have arrived at this
consideration. Here are the details:

Two exactly equal machines (the same hardware and resources), except
by the hard disk

1.  PC DELL
Hard disk:  Maxtor 20GB
RAM: 512 MB
Processor:  Pentium 3, 866 MHz

2.  PC DELL
Hard disk:  Seagate 20GB
RAM: 512 MB
Processor:  Pentium 3, 866 MHz

The disk partitions are:

/hda1	windows xp 	10 GB
/hda2	/boot 		100 MB
/hda3 	/		8900 MB
/hda4	swap  		1 GB

We would like to know if someone has had the same problem (making an
image with Norton Ghost 2003 to a dual boot system using Windows and
CentOS.)  Any suggestions are VERY important for us.  Thanks in
advance.  Regards,


Juan P. Espino

Well, believe it or not this means Norton Ghost is screwed up.  Why?
Cause a simple cat /dev/hda | cdrecord dev=/dev/dvd ... works fine as a
backup (once everything is mounted read-only and synced) for me.

Regardless this can't be a CentOS problem.  This might have to do with
Norton trying to parse the filesystem - which now includes selinux
labels...  Parsing the file system is not something it should be doing.
It should be doing a bit by bit copy - possibly with compression.

Cheers,
MaZe.

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Juan Pablo Espino wrote:
> Hello all
>
> We have two very important workstations dedicated to tasks of
> development and investigation.  At the moment we have installed a dual
> boot platform with CentOS 4.0 and Windows XP Proffessional SP2.  In
> order to do backups of these machines we need to create an image with
> Norton Ghost 2003.
>
> We have worked with Ghost during several years with different
> platforms (Red Hat, White Box Linux, Windows) without problems but now
> we are facing problems with our CentOS. When the creation of the image
> reaches approximately 50% in BOTH machines the Norton Ghost aborts
> with an error.  Using the "force cloning" option of Ghost we
managed
> to complete the creation of the image, nevertheless when recovering it
> we got this error: GRUB GRUB (the machine never booted)
>
> Then we tried to boot CentOS from a floppy and linux rescue and it
> didn't work.  Two days ago we made and we recovered images to those
> same discs with White Box and WinXP without problems.
>
> Given our experience with Norton Ghost, we considered seriously that
> the problem is CentOS.  We did many tests to have arrived at this
> consideration. Here are the details:
>
> Two exactly equal machines (the same hardware and resources), except
> by the hard disk
>
> 1.  PC DELL
> Hard disk:  Maxtor 20GB
> RAM: 512 MB
> Processor:  Pentium 3, 866 MHz
>
> 2.  PC DELL
> Hard disk:  Seagate 20GB
> RAM: 512 MB
> Processor:  Pentium 3, 866 MHz
>
> The disk partitions are:
>
> /hda1	windows xp 	10 GB
> /hda2	/boot 		100 MB
> /hda3 	/		8900 MB
> /hda4	swap  		1 GB
>
> We would like to know if someone has had the same problem (making an
> image with Norton Ghost 2003 to a dual boot system using Windows and
> CentOS.)  Any suggestions are VERY important for us.  Thanks in
> advance.  Regards,
>
>
> Juan P. Espino
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Juan Pablo Espino
> Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 3:45 PM
> To: centos at centos.org
> Subject: [CentOS] Does CentOS has problems with Norton Ghost 2003
images?
> 
> Hello all
> 
> We have two very important workstations dedicated to tasks of
> development and investigation.  At the moment we have installed a dual
> boot platform with CentOS 4.0 and Windows XP Proffessional SP2.  In
> order to do backups of these machines we need to create an image with
> Norton Ghost 2003.
> 
> We have worked with Ghost during several years with different
> platforms (Red Hat, White Box Linux, Windows) without problems but now
> we are facing problems with our CentOS. When the creation of the image
> reaches approximately 50% in BOTH machines the Norton Ghost aborts
> with an error.  Using the "force cloning" option of Ghost we
managed
> to complete the creation of the image, nevertheless when recovering it
> we got this error: GRUB GRUB (the machine never booted)
Chapter E, Boot Configuration section of the Ghost2003 manual at
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/ghost/manuals/g
host2003_guide.pdf states --

"Boot configuration
Norton Ghost uses the file /etc/lilo.conf to determine the boot
configuration. If this file does not match the boot configuration,
Norton Ghost may be unable to patch LILO during cloning. The keyword,
default, is not supported in Lilo.conf, so the first target specified
should be the default target.

If a different boot loader, such as grub, is used, or the preceding
conditions are not met, Norton Ghost clones the system but the new disk
probably will not boot. The system should be started from a floppy disk
or CD, and the boot loader should be reinstalled by running /sbin/lilo
or an equivalent."

That last paragraph seems applicable. Did White Box use lilo or grub?
> Then we tried to boot CentOS from a floppy and linux rescue and it
> didn't work.  Two days ago we made and we recovered images to those
> same discs with White Box and WinXP without problems.
> 
> Given our experience with Norton Ghost, we considered seriously that
> the problem is CentOS.  We did many tests to have arrived at this
> consideration. Here are the details:
I believe the opposite is more likely. Ghost needs to support the OS on
the disk, not the other way around. That's why you can't use Ghost to
clone HFS or ReiserFS partitions. The table below supports that
conclusion as well --

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/8f7dc138830563c888256c220
0662ecd/b343f521f647fd1b88256caf00755887?OpenDocument&prod=Norton%20Ghos
t&ver=2003%20for%20Windows%202000/NT/Me/98/XP&src=sg&pcode=ghost&svy=&cs
m=no

My guess is that White Box was identical to or close enough to one of
the supported versions to work correctly. RHAS4 and therefore CentOS4
are much newer than Ghost 2003 so it's not too much of a stretch to
imagine that it's not supported.

--
Marc

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Maciej Zenczykowski
> Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 4:33 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Does CentOS has problems with Norton Ghost 2003
> images?
> 
> Does it have to be Norton Ghost 2003?
> I know there are other solutions (GPL'ed) which achieve much the same
> thing... g4u and g4l coming to mind (and let's keep off the question
of
> whether g4l was ripped of g4u, I think it was and I also think the
> arguments for g4l being a rip of g4u are totally misguided and screwed
> up).  Never used either, although I'd probably try g4l first (it's
come
> along way since the rough beginnings...)
We've successfully used g4l on CentOS 3.4 boxes, but as has been
mentioned, that's pre-SELinux.

--
Marc

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Juan Pablo Espino
> Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 4:33 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Does CentOS has problems with Norton Ghost 2003
> images?
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Thanks for your quick response!
> We used GRUB with WhiteBox. Also, White Box used the 2.4 kernel and
> CentOS uses the 2.6 kernel... any comments?
Nope. Not really. I haven't used Ghost in about 5 years so pretty much
all I've said so far I've gleaned from publicly available information on
the Internet. It seems to me that if you want to continue to use Ghost
then their tech support or Google would be your next step.

--
Marc