How do you use Kickstart or any other Linux tools to....

[d_allen111]

I would like to create a bootable CD/DVD for each of my Linux servers for disaster recovery purpose.

Is there an easy to use Linux tools to carry out this mission. I've heard of Kickstart, but never used before.

Any ideas or wisdom, please don't hesitate to share them.

Thank you in advance.

D

[Matti_Kurkela]

Kickstart is a RedHat/CentOS/Fedora install automation tool. It is useful when you have a lot of systems and need to install the Linux OS in all of them, with minimal effort and with the exact same configuration in all of them. But it is not ideal for disaster recovery situations.

Have a look at MondoRescue instead:
http://www.mondorescue.org/

MondoRescue can use disks, tapes, network drives, CDs and DVDs as backup media. A Mondo backup is bootable, and can span multiple CDs/DVDs if necessary. When you need to restore your system, simply insert the first CD/DVD, let the system boot from it, select RESTORE and watch it go, inserting the next CD/DVD whenever requested.

Some Linux distributions even include a version of MondoRescue in their standard package collection, so all you need to do to install MondoRescue is to select it with the distribution's package manager utility.

MK

[d_allen111]

Thanks for your response MK.

I don't believe that RedHat RHEL packed with MondoRescue. You certainly made it sound simple to use. Would it be possible for me to install MondoRescue and run it without reboot my server to a single user mode?

Would you have like a cheat sheet to operate MondoRescue without have to read through hundred of pages??

Thank you for your time.

D

[AnthonySN]

Hi Mutti,
Can you pls some more light on kickstart or some docs you can share.

[Matti_Kurkela]

@d_allen111:

The MondoRescue homepage I linked in my previous answer has binary RPMs of the latest & greatest version available for many distributions, including RHEL.

Basically, install it, then run "mondoarchive" as root and start checking out the options in the UI.

Or you might read at least the QuickStart part of the documentation:

http://www.mondorescue.org/docs/mondorescue-howto/quickstart.html

@SASJ:
Kickstart is developed by RedHat.
RedHat's installation manuals include very clear instructions on how to use it.

For example, here is the part of RHEL 5 Installation Guide that is about Kickstart installations:

https://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.5/html/Installation_Guide/ch-kickstart2.html

It contains *everything* you need to know to start making Kickstart installations on RHEL 5.

If you want to use an older RHEL version, find the appropriate version of the Installation Guide from the RedHat's documentation website:

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/

Or you might even be lazy and use Google.

For example, when I search with keywords "fedora kickstart", the very first hit was Fedora's own documentation about it:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart

MK

[d_allen111]

MK,

The only trouble I have with Mondorescue is that it has way too many files available to download and I'm not sure which one to download and there are so many files there, so how would I know which one to download.

I am not lazy, but just not sure how many files to download or which one to download. I just need if you can point me to the right file to download just once.

I am looking to use the rpm file for RHEL 4 Linux servers.

Thank you in advance.

DA

[Matti_Kurkela]

First, look at the Dependencies section of the MondoRescue download page:
http://www.mondorescue.org/downloads.shtml

It says you need five packages:
- afio
- gzip
- mkisofs
- mindi-busybox
- mindi
- mondo

The first three are likely to be found in RHEL 4's standard package collection, so make sure they are installed. If "afio" is not included, it's available in MondoRescue's RHEL 4 download directory, too.

The download directory for RHEL4:
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/

For the latest version, you'll need these RPMs:

For 32-bit RHEL4 systems:
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mindi-2.0.7.3-1.rhel4.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mindi-busybox-1.7.3-1.rhel4.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mondo-2.2.9.3-1.rhel4.i386.rpm

For 64-bit RHEL4 systems:
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mindi-2.0.7.3-1.rhel4.x86_64.rpm
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mindi-busybox-1.7.3-1.rhel4.x86_64.rpm
ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mondo-2.2.9.3-1.rhel4.x86_64.rpm

There's also the documentation package, if you want it:

ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/mondo-doc-2.2.8-1.rhel4.noarch.rpm

"mindi-busybox" contains the tools that will be embedded into the bootable backup images. "mindi" is the boot image generator, "mondo" is the UI and the actual backup software. Mondo uses Mindi to create bootable backups.

MK

[d_allen111]

I see, there are a lot more to it than just download the binary files. It make a lot of sense now.

Thank you!!

[Tim Nelson]

I use mondo to clone servers as well as DR as this gets me a system with the OS and same configurations.

with a little tweaking or some supporting scripts you can clone and make changes to IP, hostname, as needed.

I found that the LVM section of mondo was a bit odd and unreliable. I scripted the root disk partitioning and LVM creation for then run mondorestore and skip the partioning and LVM sections.


You can force mondo ( actually mindi ) to include any file/script in the ISO. e.g. your special scripts;..

Best of luck.. if you need more than what is on the website search the mail archives at sourceforge and/or sign up and post to the mailing list.

[wobbe]

I like using clonezilla for backup and cloning linux servers (also works for windows) It's a live cd that uses partclone and other tools to make an image of your harddisk. I's a bit like Norton Ghost but then free :-) There are others, like ping or g4l. But I found clonezilla the best for my purpose.

[dirk dierickx]

Using a satelite server is perhaps a solution for you as well. It uses kickstart to install systems, but it can do much more.

satelite is the official RH supported software, but it is OSS and the 'free' version is called spacewalk, available here: http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/

[Christian Reuss]

Hello,

but according to the spacewalk documentation, RHEL is not a supported os, only Fedora and CentOS are. If you use RHEL you have to use RHN Satellite.

Cheers
Christian