Full Linux OS restore from tape using Omniback

[Gregory Lee]

Anyone has experience recovering a Redhat system completely by restoring it from tape using Omniback? I'm trying it out on my RH7.2 system (uses Grub) with an Ultrium tape device:

1- On my current system, I made a full backup of all partitions using Omniback
2- Then I reinstalled the Redhat OS followed by Omniback agent
3- Next, I performed a full restore from tape

(normally with LILO I will first fun lilo -v in case the mappings were wrong but since I'm using GRUB, I didn't change anything; just ran ldconfig -v)

4- However, when I rebooted the system it just got stuck with the words "GRUB" on the screen. I can however do an emergency boot but I still cannot boot the system.

Anyone has experience in this? Any guidelines on how to do this using Omniback?

One way is to merely restore the application data but there are log files in /var/log; config files in /etc - how can u tell which partition to restore? It'll be a pain if one has to go throught individual folders to select which to restore frm tape.

Any help is appreciated. I'm hoping to work this out without using Mondo or other tools.

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi,

sorry, Omniback doesn't provide this functionality for Linux. You can do an Ignite tape for HP-UX or disaster recovery tape for Windows NT (OBDR) but there is no such functionality for Linux. (sorry for the bad news)

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[Kodjo Agbenu · Accepted solution]

Hello,

As far as I know, you should use "grub-install" at least once after the OmniBack restore, to install the Grub boot code in the boot record of the disk or partition. I don't have the exact syntax of grub-install, but it should look like :

grub-install /dev/sda

Here, /dev/sda stands for the MBR of the first scsi disk. You can adapt this according to your configuration.

IMPORTANT REMARK : unlike lilo, with Grub you do not need to re-install the boot loader on the disk each time you recompile the kernel. The only time you need this is when you replace disk drives or delete/re-create the boot partition.

In your case, you have to do "grub-install" just after your OmniBack recovery. May be in a post-exec script ?


Good luck.

Kodjo

[Gregory Lee]

Thanks. I got the lead from the grub-install post. What I had to do was to do a rescue boot then:

- execute /sbin/grub

Once I have the grub shell, type:
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

Which seem to do the trick - the server could boot!