CentOS - Sep 2019 - How to dump/restore a CentOS 7 system

Hello All,

I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and restore a
CentOS 7 system. I usually use dump/restore commands. However, I?m having
trouble to handle installing bootloader and creating initramfs for C7 system.
Does anyone know a good document source that details those procedure?
Thank you,

Xinhuan Zheng

On 2019-09-25 11:31, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and restore a
CentOS 7 system.
Though I can not answer OP's question, I have question of my own.

Is this really routine (often) task for Linux sysadmins? I used 
something like that to replicate cluster nodes in the past, but 
kickstart would be routine task for me. dump/restore sounds like routine 
from MS Windows world (I hear they "re-image" system if something goes
wrong ;-)

Am I wrong? Do we in Linux world do this routinely?

Valeri
> I usually use dump/restore commands. However, I?m having trouble to handle
installing bootloader and creating initramfs for C7 system. Does anyone know a
good document source that details those procedure?
> Thank you,
> 
> Xinhuan Zheng
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> 
-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On Wed, 2019-09-25 at 11:46 -0500, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> 
> On 2019-09-25 11:31, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:
> > 
> > Hello All,
> > 
> > I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and
> > restore a CentOS 7 system.
> Though I can not answer OP's question, I have question of my own.
> 
> Is this really routine (often) task for Linux sysadmins? I used?
> something like that to replicate cluster nodes in the past, but?
> kickstart would be routine task for me. dump/restore sounds like
> routine?
> from MS Windows world (I hear they "re-image" system if something
> goes?
> wrong ;-)
> 
> Am I wrong? Do we in Linux world do this routinely?
> 
You are not wrong. ?However, I will point out first that dump and
restore are utilities that have been around the Unix/Linux world for a
very long time, rather than something from the M$ world.

The issue of how to restore/copy a system installation is open to
discussion these days. ?I have recently been in a situation where
duplicating identical machines is done conveniently with dump and
restore. ?I have also been in situations where installing or
reinstalling a system of slightly different configuration is easily
accomplished via kickstart.

It mostly depends on the situation to be addressed at the moment, and
the tools available. ?For instance, to perform a one-time installation
when you do not have kickstart set up on your network is a significant
amount of work, and may not be worth the effort of kickstart set-up.

This is one of the benefits of decades of development. ?More tools are
available to handle the installation requirements.
> Valeri
> 
> > 
> > I usually use dump/restore commands. However, I?m having trouble to
> > handle installing bootloader and creating initramfs for C7 system.
> > Does anyone know a good document source that details those
> > procedure?
> > Thank you,
> > 
> > Xinhuan Zheng
> > _______________________________________________
> > CentOS mailing list
> > CentOS at centos.org
> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> > 
-- 
Ron Loftin			reloftin at twcny.rr.com

"God, root, what is difference ?"	Piter from UserFriendly

On Wed, 25 Sep 2019, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and 
>> restore a CentOS 7 system.
>
> Though I can not answer OP's question, I have question of my own.
>
> Is this really routine (often) task for Linux sysadmins? I used 
> something like that to replicate cluster nodes in the past, but 
> kickstart would be routine task for me. dump/restore sounds like 
> routine from MS Windows world (I hear they "re-image" system if 
> something goes wrong ;-)
>
> Am I wrong? Do we in Linux world do this routinely?
I would not say routinely, but I would say crucially.

The poster child for dump/restore is a machine with commercial 
software that is difficult to install or customize, especially one 
with an RDBMS system large enough to make dumping and restoring the 
data tables an onerous task.

The usual workflow -- kickstart and puppet/ansible/etc -- doesn't work 
in that situation.

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45?38' N, 122?6' W

> Hello All,
> 
> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and restore a
> CentOS 7 system. I usually use dump/restore commands. However, I?m having
> trouble to handle installing bootloader and creating initramfs for C7
system.
> Does anyone know a good document source that details those procedure?
> Thank you,
> 
> Xinhuan Zheng
> _______________________________________________
I have had good luck with Clonezilla for both Linux and Windows machines.  
It boots from CD and can put the image of the system in an assortment of places.
I personally, dump to one of the large external USB drives.  
Restoring to a new disk works fine so long as the disk is of equal size or
larger than
the original.

Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> On 2019-09-25 11:31, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:
>>
>> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and
>> restore a CentOS 7 system.
>
> Though I can not answer OP's question, I have question of my own.
>
> Is this really routine (often) task for Linux sysadmins? I used
> something like that to replicate cluster nodes in the past, but kickstart
> would be routine task for me. dump/restore sounds like routine from MS
> Windows world (I hear they "re-image" system if something goes
> wrong ;-)
>
> Am I wrong? Do we in Linux world do this routinely?
>
>> I usually use dump/restore commands. However, I?m having trouble to
>> handle installing bootloader and creating initramfs for C7 system. Does
>> anyone know a good document source that details those procedure? Thank
>> you,
>>
I have never used dump/restore.

Someone mentioned commercial software - I've cloned systems, esp. compute
nodes in a cluster - with rsync.

      mark

Le 25/09/2019 ? 18:31, Xinhuan Zheng a ?crit :
> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and
> restore a CentOS 7 system. I usually use dump/restore commands.
> However, I?m having trouble to handle installing bootloader and
> creating initramfs for C7 system. Does anyone know a good document
> source that details those procedure? Thank you,
I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I'm regularly
dumping/restoring various operating systems on a handful of sandbox
machines for testing purposes. I'm using G4L (Ghost4Linux) over FTP for
doing this.

Here's a little blog article I wrote (in french):

  * https://www.microlinux.fr/ghost4linux/

Cheers,

Niki


-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'?glise - 30730 Montpezat
Site : https://www.microlinux.fr
Mail : info at microlinux.fr
T?l. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 04:31:06PM +0000, Xinhuan Zheng
wrote:
> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and
> restore a CentOS 7 system. I usually use dump/restore
> commands. However, I?m having trouble to handle installing
> bootloader and creating initramfs for C7 system. Does anyone know a
> good document source that details those procedure? 
One of the advantages of UEFI -- The bootloader is just a fat32
partition with a couple of UEFI executables and the grub.cfg.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

--On Wednesday, September 25, 2019 5:31 PM +0000 Xinhuan Zheng 
<xzheng at christianbook.com> wrote:
> I'm having trouble to handle installing bootloader and creating
> initramfs for C7 system. Does anyone know a good document source that
> details those procedure?
This hasn't been addressed yet. After restoring the partition images from 
tape (presumably using a rescue CD), how does one make the system bootable?

BTW, I just saw an article on tape backup and how the media are still 
incredibly cheaper than disks (and far cheaper than SSD), but the drives 
are extremely expensive (like $3k) so prohibitive for single-server 
installations like the home user.

<https://www.techradar.com/news/theres-one-crucial-way-tape-still-trounces-ssds-and-hard-drives-when-it-comes-to-storage>

On 25/9/2019 7:31 ?.?., Xinhuan Zheng wrote:
> I guess it is very common for administrative purpose, to dump and restore a
CentOS 7 system. I usually use dump/restore commands. However, I?m having
trouble to handle installing bootloader and creating initramfs for C7 system.
Does anyone know a good document source that details those procedure?
I am using mondorescue (mondoarchive, mondorestore) for years with 
success: http://www.mondorescue.org/

Allows bare metal recovery. I have tested and it works fine in CentOS 
5,6,7.

In CentOS 7, after restore, I have had some issues, but I managed to 
resolve them. (Details in mailing list archives.)

Cheers,
Nick