Hi list, for windows we use ghost to backup system and recovery. can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? I want to create a image and install to another machine, So that the personal configuration will not be lost. Thanks, -Aubrey
> Hi list, > > for windows we use ghost to backup system and > recovery. > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? > > I want to create a image and install to another > machine, > So that the personal configuration will not be lost.Since I don''t do Windows, I''m not familiar with ghost, but I gather from Wikipedia that it''s more a disk cloning tool (bare metal backup/restore) than a conventional backup program, although some people may well use it for backups too. Zfs has send and receive commands, which more or less correspond to ufsdump and ufsrestore for ufs, except that the names send and receive are perhaps more appropriate, since the zfs(1m) man page says:> The format of the stream is evolving. No backwards compatibility is > guaranteed. You may not be able to receive your streams on future > versions of ZFS."which means to me that it''s not a really good choice for archiving or long-term backups, but it should be ok for transferring zfs filesystems between systems that are the same OS version (or at any rate, close enough that the format of the zfs send/receive datastream is compatible). There are of course also generic archiving utilities that can be used for backup/restore, like tar (or star), pax, cpio, and so on. But as far as I know, there''s no bare metal backup/restore facility that comes with Solaris, although there are some commercial (and probably quite expensive) products that do that. But there''s probably nothing at all that''s quite equivalent to Norton Ghost. One can of course use "dd" to copy entire raw disk partitions, but that won''t set up the partitions, nor will it work as expected unless all disk sizes are identical (for filesystems that don''t have the OS on them), or if the OS is on there, all hardware is identical. Depending on just what "personal configuration" you mean, you may not necessarily need to back up the whole system anyway. Which is another way of saying that I''m not sure your post was specific enough about what you''re doing to make it possible to suggest the best available (and preferably free) solution. This message posted from opensolaris.org
> Hi list, > > for windows we use ghost to backup system and > recovery. > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? > > I want to create a image and install to another > machine, > So that the personal configuration will not be lost.Since I don''t do Windows, I''m not familiar with ghost, but I gather from Wikipedia that it''s more a disk cloning tool (bare metal backup/restore) than a conventional backup program, although some people may well use it for backups too. Zfs has send and receive commands, which more or less correspond to ufsdump and ufsrestore for ufs, except that the names send and receive are perhaps more appropriate, since the zfs(1m) man page says:> The format of the stream is evolving. No backwards compatibility is > guaranteed. You may not be able to receive your streams on future > versions of ZFS."which means to me that it''s not a really good choice for archiving or long-term backups, but it should be ok for transferring zfs filesystems between systems that are the same OS version (or at any rate, close enough that the format of the zfs send/receive datastream is compatible). There are of course also generic archiving utilities that can be used for backup/restore, like tar (or star), pax, cpio, and so on. But as far as I know, there''s no bare metal backup/restore facility that comes with Solaris, although there are some commercial (and probably quite expensive) products that do that. But there''s probably nothing at all that''s quite equivalent to Norton Ghost. One can of course use "dd" to copy entire raw disk partitions, but that won''t set up the partitions, nor will it work as expected unless all disk sizes are identical (for filesystems that don''t have the OS on them), or if the OS is on there, all hardware is identical. Depending on just what "personal configuration" you mean, you may not necessarily need to back up the whole system anyway. Which is another way of saying that I''m not sure your post was specific enough about what you''re doing to make it possible to suggest the best available (and preferably free) solution. This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:44 +0800, Aubrey Li wrote:> for windows we use ghost to backup system and recovery. > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS?How about flar ? http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=view [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs root though ] cheers, tim
> > On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:44 +0800, Aubrey Li wrote: > > for windows we use ghost to backup system and > recovery. > > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? > > How about flar ? > http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=v > iew > [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs > root though ] > > cheers, > timOops, forgot about that one... This message posted from opensolaris.org
Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at Sun.COM> wrote:> > On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:44 +0800, Aubrey Li wrote: > > for windows we use ghost to backup system and recovery. > > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? > > How about flar ? > http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=view > [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs root though ]Isn''t flat based on the outdated cpio? J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
"Richard L. Hamilton" <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote:> Zfs has send and receive commands, which more or less correspond to > ufsdump and ufsrestore for ufs, except that the names send and receive > are perhaps more appropriate, since the zfs(1m) man page says: > > The format of the stream is evolving. No backwards compatibility is > > guaranteed. You may not be able to receive your streams on future > > versions of ZFS." > which means to me that it''s not a really good choice for archiving or long-term > backups, but it should be ok for transferring zfs filesystems between systems > that are the same OS version (or at any rate, close enough that the format > of the zfs send/receive datastream is compatible).Another reason why it does not make a good long term backup is that it does not allow to access single files.> There are of course also generic archiving utilities that can be used for > backup/restore, like tar (or star), pax, cpio, and so on. But as far as I know, > there''s no bare metal backup/restore facility that comes with Solaris, although > there are some commercial (and probably quite expensive) products that > do that. But there''s probably nothing at all that''s quite equivalent to Norton > Ghost.Could you explain what you understand by a "bare metal" backup/restore facility? J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Hey Joerg, On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 13:47 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:> > How about flar ? > > http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=view > > [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs root though ] > > Isn''t flar based on the outdated cpio?cpio was updated to support ZFS ACLs as part of "PSARC 2002/240 ZFS", if that''s what you''re referring to ? cheers, tim
Joerg Schilling wrote:> "Richard L. Hamilton" <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote: > > >> Zfs has send and receive commands, which more or less correspond to >> ufsdump and ufsrestore for ufs, except that the names send and receive >> are perhaps more appropriate, since the zfs(1m) man page says: >> >>> The format of the stream is evolving. No backwards compatibility is >>> guaranteed. You may not be able to receive your streams on future >>> versions of ZFS." >>> >> which means to me that it''s not a really good choice for archiving or long-term >> backups, but it should be ok for transferring zfs filesystems between systems >> that are the same OS version (or at any rate, close enough that the format >> of the zfs send/receive datastream is compatible). >> > > Another reason why it does not make a good long term backup is that it does not > allow to access single files. > > > >> There are of course also generic archiving utilities that can be used for >> backup/restore, like tar (or star), pax, cpio, and so on. But as far as I know, >> there''s no bare metal backup/restore facility that comes with Solaris, although >> there are some commercial (and probably quite expensive) products that >> do that. But there''s probably nothing at all that''s quite equivalent to Norton >> Ghost. >> > > Could you explain what you understand by a "bare metal" backup/restore facility? > > J?rg > >"bare-metal" restore generally means that you give it a piece of hardware with nothing installed on it, boot it somehow, and the "restore" program can bring the machine all the way back up to a previously-stored state. Norton Ghost has two main purposes, which are related, but not the same: restoring a fixed configuration to bare metal, and creating clones of a configuration. The first is for bare metal recovery of a crashed (or dead) system back to a previous known state. The second is for using on similar (or identical hardware) to duplicate the same configuration across multiple machines. The UFS utilities ''dump'' and ''restore'' don''t exist for ZFS, and the ''zfs send'' or ''zfs receive'' are a bit different. HOWEVER, ''zfs send/receive'' work fine for a bare metal recovery, as all you are looking for is to restore to a previous fixed state. The process is a bit more involved than with Ghost, and Ghost clearly wins on ease-of-use here. Basically, to do this kind of bare metal restore with Solaris, I would need to have a ''zfs send'' file somewhere on the network, then boot the new machine to single user mode (from either a net boot or CD). I''d then have to do some manual work (like configure the network, format and setup the disks) before running a ''zfs receive'' command to actually get back my config. For cloning, the combination of the Jumpstart booting/managing tools and the Flash archiver are radically superior to Ghost, both in flexibility and speed. Google ''Solaris JET'' to get a good view of the Jumpstart system flexibility and features. Look at ''man flar'' for an introduction to flash archives. I agree that zfs send/receive is not a good backup tool, for all the reasons previously discussed. -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at Sun.COM> wrote:> Hey Joerg, > > On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 13:47 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote: > > > How about flar ? > > > http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=view > > > [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs root though ] > > > > Isn''t flar based on the outdated cpio? > > cpio was updated to support ZFS ACLs as part of "PSARC 2002/240 ZFS", if > that''s what you''re referring to ?cpio does not support files > 8 GB (POSIX archive variant) or files > 4 GB (SVr4 archive variant) and cpio does not support sparse files. cpio is not extensible without introducing a new incompatible cpio like archive format. This is what has been decided ~ 10 years ago on the POSIX mailing list and this is why the infinitely extensible tar format was created under the name "pax". P.S.: I am talking about the cpio program creating "cpio" archives and this is what I believe happens in flar. Is this what you are referring to? J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Erik Trimble <Erik.Trimble at Sun.COM> wrote:> "bare-metal" restore generally means that you give it a piece of > hardware with nothing installed on it, boot it somehow, and the > "restore" program can bring the machine all the way back up to a > previously-stored state. > > Norton Ghost has two main purposes, which are related, but not the > same: restoring a fixed configuration to bare metal, and creating > clones of a configuration. The first is for bare metal recovery of a > crashed (or dead) system back to a previous known state. The second is > for using on similar (or identical hardware) to duplicate the same > configuration across multiple machines.OK, so zfs send/receive handles the rare case where a complete crash happened. ufsrestore in addition handles the more "popular" case where a single file needs to be restored. I know that this case can be made less frequent by using zfs snapshots..... J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Joerg Schilling wrote:> Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at Sun.COM> wrote: > > >> Hey Joerg, >> >> On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 13:47 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote: >> >>>> How about flar ? >>>> http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=view >>>> [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs root though ] >>>> >>> Isn''t flar based on the outdated cpio? >>> >> cpio was updated to support ZFS ACLs as part of "PSARC 2002/240 ZFS", if >> that''s what you''re referring to ? >> > > cpio does not support files > 8 GB (POSIX archive variant) or files > 4 GB > (SVr4 archive variant) and cpio does not support sparse files. > cpio is not extensible without introducing a new incompatible cpio like > archive format. This is what has been decided ~ 10 years ago on the POSIX > mailing list and this is why the infinitely extensible tar format was created > under the name "pax". > > P.S.: I am talking about the cpio program creating "cpio" archives and this is > what I believe happens in flar. > > Is this what you are referring to? > > > J?rg > >Reading the flar(1) man page, and looking at the -L option, then reading flash_archive(1) leads me to believe that flar uses cpio by default as the archival tool, but also supports pax. The actual flar file output as a result is a special format unique to flar, so there is no limit on filesize intrinsic to flar itself. -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
Hi Joerg, On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:09 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:> Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at Sun.COM> wrote: > > On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 13:47 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote: > > > Isn''t flar based on the outdated cpio? > > > > cpio was updated to support ZFS ACLs as part of "PSARC 2002/240 ZFS", if > > that''s what you''re referring to ?<snip semi-interesting history about cpio>> P.S.: I am talking about the cpio program creating "cpio" archives and this is > what I believe happens in flar.Not so sure - man flash_archive(4) you can choose the archiver you want it to use. In terms of flar being extensible, it doesn''t matter - the flash archive is in "flash archive" format, and isn''t intended for use by anything other than the flash archive tools afaik. :-) cheers, tim
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote:>> Hi list, >> >> for windows we use ghost to backup system and >> recovery. >> can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? >> >> I want to create a image and install to another >> machine, >> So that the personal configuration will not be lost. > > Since I don''t do Windows, I''m not familiar with ghost, but I gather from > Wikipedia that it''s more a disk cloning tool (bare metal backup/restore) > than a conventional backup program, although some people may well use it > for backups too. > > Zfs has send and receive commands, which more or less correspond to > ufsdump and ufsrestore for ufs, except that the names send and receive > are perhaps more appropriate, since the zfs(1m) man page says: >> The format of the stream is evolving. No backwards compatibility is >> guaranteed. You may not be able to receive your streams on future >> versions of ZFS." > which means to me that it''s not a really good choice for archiving or long-term > backups, but it should be ok for transferring zfs filesystems between systems > that are the same OS version (or at any rate, close enough that the format > of the zfs send/receive datastream is compatible).For now I''m just interested in zfs send/receive. If I understand correctly, zfs send/receive need an existing pool on the destination disk. what I want to do is, install the system from beginning, using my own image. Let me take an example, I bought 3 machines, I installed one, and made a lot of personal configuration, what is the easiest way to clone this one to another two by ZFS functionality? I prefer to clone the system to an USB disk first. Thanks, -Aubrey
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:30 PM, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote:>> >> On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:44 +0800, Aubrey Li wrote: >> > for windows we use ghost to backup system and >> recovery. >> > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? >> >> How about flar ? >> http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=v >> iew >> [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs >> root though ] >> >> cheers, >> tim > > Oops, forgot about that one... > >If I recall correctly, flar is not supported on OpenSolaris 200805 release. Thanks, -Aubrey
Aubrey Li wrote:> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:30 PM, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote: > >>> On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:44 +0800, Aubrey Li wrote: >>> >>>> for windows we use ghost to backup system and >>>> >>> recovery. >>> >>>> can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? >>>> >>> How about flar ? >>> http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=v >>> iew >>> [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs >>> root though ] >>> >>> cheers, >>> tim >>> >> Oops, forgot about that one... >> >> >> > If I recall correctly, flar is not supported on OpenSolaris 200805 release. > > Thanks, > -Aubrey > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >I''m pretty sure that OpenSolaris 2008.5 is the same a Nevada b89, which definite _does_ have flar. I''m not 100% sure you can get the "install from flash archive" as an option when using the X-based installer; but it should be available when using the text-based one. flar doesn''t care what the underlying filesystem is. However, the support tools in the installer do care, since flar is run after the filesystem has been laid out and created. -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Erik Trimble <Erik.Trimble at sun.com> wrote:> Aubrey Li wrote: >> >> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:30 PM, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> >> wrote: >> >>>> >>>> On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 15:44 +0800, Aubrey Li wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> for windows we use ghost to backup system and >>>>> >>>> >>>> recovery. >>>> >>>>> >>>>> can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? >>>>> >>>> >>>> How about flar ? >>>> http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5668/flash-24?a=v >>>> iew >>>> [ I''m actually not sure if it''s supported for zfs >>>> root though ] >>>> >>>> cheers, >>>> tim >>>> >>> >>> Oops, forgot about that one... >>> >>> >>> >> >> If I recall correctly, flar is not supported on OpenSolaris 200805 >> release. >> >> Thanks, >> -Aubrey >> _______________________________________________ >> zfs-discuss mailing list >> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >> > > I''m pretty sure that OpenSolaris 2008.5 is the same a Nevada b89, which > definite _does_ have flar.No, OpenSolaris 200805 is based on b86, not b89. And if you read indiana mailing list, you''ll know flar is not supported.> I''m not 100% sure you can get the "install from flash archive" as an option > when using the X-based installer; but it should be available when using the > text-based one. > > flar doesn''t care what the underlying filesystem is. However, the support > tools in the installer do care, since flar is run after the filesystem has > been laid out and created. >Your description about zfs send/receive to a bare metal system sounds interesting to me. I''d like to have a try. Thanks, -Aubrey
Aubrey Li wrote:> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote: > >>> Hi list, >>> >>> for windows we use ghost to backup system and >>> recovery. >>> can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? >>> >>> I want to create a image and install to another >>> machine, >>> So that the personal configuration will not be lost. >>> >> Since I don''t do Windows, I''m not familiar with ghost, but I gather from >> Wikipedia that it''s more a disk cloning tool (bare metal backup/restore) >> than a conventional backup program, although some people may well use it >> for backups too. >> >> Zfs has send and receive commands, which more or less correspond to >> ufsdump and ufsrestore for ufs, except that the names send and receive >> are perhaps more appropriate, since the zfs(1m) man page says: >> >>> The format of the stream is evolving. No backwards compatibility is >>> guaranteed. You may not be able to receive your streams on future >>> versions of ZFS." >>> >> which means to me that it''s not a really good choice for archiving or long-term >> backups, but it should be ok for transferring zfs filesystems between systems >> that are the same OS version (or at any rate, close enough that the format >> of the zfs send/receive datastream is compatible). >> > > For now I''m just interested in zfs send/receive. > If I understand correctly, zfs send/receive need an existing pool on > the destination > disk. what I want to do is, install the system from beginning, using > my own image. > > Let me take an example, I bought 3 machines, I installed one, and made a lot of > personal configuration, what is the easiest way to clone this one to another two > by ZFS functionality? I prefer to clone the system to an USB disk first. > > Thanks, > -Aubrey > _______________________________________________ > >''zfs send'' and ''zfs receive'' write and read (respectively) to standard output. Thus, you could do this: (1) Install system A (2) hook USB drive to A, and mount it at /mnt (3) use ''zfs send tank/root > /mnt/root'' to save off the root ZFS filesystem to the USB drive (4) boot system B from CD/DVD, either to single-user mode, or to the graphical installer. (5) manually set up your zpools and zfs filesystems (6) plug in the USB drive, again mounting it at (say) /mnt (7) use ''cat /mnt/root | zfs receive tank/root'' to restore the root filesystem Note that this will create an EXACT DUPLICATE, with the same name, IP address, etc. You should then run ''sys-unconfig'', reboot the system, at which time it will ask you for a new name/ip/nameservice, etc. Alternately (and, preferably, in my opinion), do this: (1) set up system A. (2) mount USB drive (or, just a spare partition on A) on /mnt (3) flarcreate -n myclone -c -S -x /mnt /mnt/myclone.flar (4) NFS share /mnt (4) boot system B via DVD/CD (5) during installation, after network config chose ''flash archive'' as the media, and choose the NFS path A:/mnt/myclone.flar as the source, you should be able to do filesystem layout afterwards, picking your favorite ZFS layout then. (6) wait - after the install, the system will reboot and ask you to input the name/ip/nameservice info. Note: I have not tried this yet, but it _should_ be straightforward. -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
Aubrey Li wrote:> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Erik Trimble <Erik.Trimble at sun.com> wrote: > >> I''m pretty sure that OpenSolaris 2008.5 is the same a Nevada b89, which >> definite _does_ have flar. >> > > No, OpenSolaris 200805 is based on b86, not b89. > And if you read indiana mailing list, you''ll know flar is not supported. >Ah. I just use Nevada. b89 certainly looks like most of the Indiana stuff. But, I wasn''t paying that close attention as to when the Nevada->Indiana->2008.5 fork went. In any case, ZFS root is supported on Nevada B90, so you might be interested in that instead of 2008.5 -- Erik Trimble Java System Support Mailstop: usca22-123 Phone: x17195 Santa Clara, CA Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at Sun.COM> wrote:> > P.S.: I am talking about the cpio program creating "cpio" archives and this is > > what I believe happens in flar. > > Not so sure - man flash_archive(4) you can choose the archiver you want > it to use. In terms of flar being extensible, it doesn''t matter - the > flash archive is in "flash archive" format, and isn''t intended for use > by anything other than the flash archive tools afaik. :-)In Solaris 9 there is only the cpio format and both, Sun cpio and Sun pax do not support sparse files. J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Aubrey Li <aubrey at blastwave.org> wrote:> for windows we use ghost to backup system and recovery. > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS?You could probably use a Ghost bootdisk to create an image of a OpenSolaris system. I''ve also used Drive Snapshot to image Windows and Linux systems. It might work for Opensolaris as well. It would create a block level backup, and the restore might not work on a system which isn''t identical. http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ -B -- Brandon High bhigh at freaks.com "The good is the enemy of the best." - Nietzsche
Ghost should work just fine. It''s not just a windows program, it''s best used on a bootable cd or floppy (or network boot for the adventurous), and it''ll backup any hard drive, not just windows. If you''re using ghost it''s always best to have a bootable CD or similar, since you can recover the drive if you can''t boot your computer otherwise. This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 11:53 -0700, Brandon High wrote:> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Aubrey Li <aubrey at blastwave.org> wrote: > > for windows we use ghost to backup system and recovery. > > can we do similar thing for solaris by ZFS? > > You could probably use a Ghost bootdisk to create an image of a > OpenSolaris system. > > I''ve also used Drive Snapshot to image Windows and Linux systems. It > might work for Opensolaris as well. It would create a block level > backup, and the restore might not work on a system which isn''t > identical. http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 23:01 -0700, Ross wrote:> Ghost should work just fine. It''s not just a windows program, it''s > best used on a bootable cd or floppy (or network boot for the > adventurous), and it''ll backup any hard drive, not just windows. > > If you''re using ghost it''s always best to have a bootable CD or > similar, since you can recover the drive if you can''t boot your > computer otherwise. >Raw disk images are, uh, nice and all, but I don''t think that was what Aubrey had in mind when asking zfs-discuss about a backup solution. This is 2008, not 1960. If he wanted that he could just use dd (or partimage for a slight optimisation). =P -Albert
Hi Erik, Thanks for your instruction, but let me dig into details. On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 10:04 PM, Erik Trimble <Erik.Trimble at sun.com> wrote:> > Thus, you could do this: > > (1) Install system ANo problem, :-)> (2) hook USB drive to A, and mount it at /mntI created a zfs pool, and mount it at /tank, now my system looks like the following: # zpool list NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 147G 14.0G 133G 9% ONLINE - tank 149G 94K 149G 0% ONLINE - # zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT rpool 14.0G 131G 56.5K /rpool rpool at install 17.5K - 55K - rpool/ROOT 3.45G 131G 18K /rpool/ROOT rpool/ROOT at install 0 - 18K - rpool/ROOT/opensolaris 3.45G 131G 2.54G legacy rpool/ROOT/opensolaris at install 63.2M - 2.22G - rpool/ROOT/opensolaris/opt 862M 131G 862M /opt rpool/ROOT/opensolaris/opt at install 72K - 3.60M - rpool/export 10.5G 131G 19K /export rpool/export at install 15K - 19K - rpool/export/home 10.5G 131G 10.5G /export/home rpool/export/home at install 19K - 21K - tank 89.5K 147G 1K /tank> (3) use ''zfs send tank/root > /mnt/root'' to save off the root ZFS > filesystem to the USB drive"zfs send" always needs a snapshot, So I made a snapshot of rpool. #zfs snapshot -r rpool at 20080606 Here, "zfs send tank/root > /mnt/root" doesn''t work, "zfs send" can''t accept a directory as an output. So I use zfs send and zfs receive: # zfs send -R rpool at 20080606 | zfs receive -dF tank cannot mount ''/opt'': directory is not empty Is there anything I missed or I did wrong? Thanks, -Aubrey
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 12:23 AM, Aubrey Li <aubrey at blastwave.org> wrote:> Here, "zfs send tank/root > /mnt/root" doesn''t work, "zfs send" can''t accept > a directory as an output. So I use zfs send and zfs receive:Really? zfs send just gives you a byte stream, and the shell redirects it to the file "root" in the fs at /mnt. Provided your shell has large file support, it should work just fine. -B -- Brandon High bhigh at freaks.com "The good is the enemy of the best." - Nietzsche
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:37 PM, Albert Lee <trisk+opensolaris at acm.jhu.edu> wrote:> Raw disk images are, uh, nice and all, but I don''t think that was what > Aubrey had in mind when asking zfs-discuss about a backup solution. This > is 2008, not 1960.But retro is in! The point that I didn''t really make is that Ghost and Drive Snapshot can create images of known filesystems (NTFS, FAT, ext2/3, reiserfs) that aren''t raw images. zfs send is probably closest to that, except both of the imaging tools allow you to mount images and browse them. -B -- Brandon High bhigh at freaks.com "The good is the enemy of the best." - Nietzsche
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 10:41 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> wrote:> On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 12:23 AM, Aubrey Li <aubrey at blastwave.org> wrote: >> Here, "zfs send tank/root > /mnt/root" doesn''t work, "zfs send" can''t accept >> a directory as an output. So I use zfs send and zfs receive: > > Really? zfs send just gives you a byte stream, and the shell redirects > it to the file "root" in the fs at /mnt. Provided your shell has large > file support, it should work just fine. >Yeah, it works of course, after I realize "root" is a file, not a directory. This is not what I''m struggling now. zfs receive will mount the fs after get it from zfs send, but these fs is already mounted on the existing fs, so zfs receive abort.... Any thoughts? Thanks, -Aubrey