White Papers
title: Disaster Recovery of Linux Physical and Virtual Machines created_at: 2014.09.09 updated_at: 2015.10.01 category: White Papers platforms: Windows, Mac ---
Retrospect 9.5 for Windows and 11.5 for Mac include updated Linux Clients that support recent versions of several Linux server distributions. Considering the differences among the supported Linux configurations, this article outlines the steps to prepare for and perform disaster recovery using Linux Client to a new disk or virtual machine.
If you are saving disk layout of /dev/sda to a network or USB volume mounted on /mnt/your_backup:
Be careful typing to avoid corrupting your disk: sudo sfdisk –d /dev/sda > /mnt/your_backup/disk_layout.txt
cp /etc/fstab /mnt/your_backup
If using lvm: cp /etc/lvm/backup/* /mnt/your_backup
Also copy the Retrospect Client installer to /mnt/your_backup
You may be using separate partitions or logical volumes for / (root), /boot, /home and other volumes. Use Retrospect to back up the ones you want to be able to restore.
Download a LiveCD for the architecture that matches your Linux environment. It simplifies disaster recovery for some Linux configurations, such as those using GRUB 2. We recommend using the Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop LiveCD listed below, but you can use other LiveCDs for distributions supported by Retrospect Client.
From the running Linux LiveCD environment, start a terminal shell as root
If your LiveCD has firewall enabled (unlike Ubuntu Desktop LiveCD), configure it to allow TCP and UDP connections to port 497
If using LiveCD for x64, install 32-bit glibc libraries:
CentOS and RHEL: yum install glibc.i686
Debian and Ubuntu: apt-get install libc6-i386
Install Retrospect Client
If you have previously saved disk layout of /dev/sda to a network or USB volume mounted on /mnt/your_backup:
Be careful typing to avoid corrupting other disks: sfdisk –f /dev/sda < /mnt/your_backup/disk_layout.txt
If using lvm to recreate physical volume and volume group at /dev/sda2:
Find the UUID of original physical volume group (pv0) in /mnt/your_backup/your_lvm_backup_vg_file
pvcreate –uuid "your_pv_uuid" –restorefile /mnt/your_backup/your_lvm_backup_vg_file /dev/sda2
vgcfgrestore -f /mnt/your_backup/your_lvm_backup_vg_file your_original_vg_name
vgchange -a y your_original_vg_name
Format the file systems to be restored using their original UUIDs recorded in /mnt/your_backup/fstab
In addition to / (root), you would need to restore other volumes (such as /boot or /home) if they are in separate partitions or logical volumes. First mount these volumes (e.g. /mnt/hd_root, /mnt/hd_boot, /mnt/hd_home). Then add the Linux Client as a source for Retrospect to restore to the mounted volumes.
If using GRUB 0.9x on hd0 with the /boot volume in its first partition:
grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
If using GRUB 2 on /dev/sda:
If the boot volume is in separate partition from /mnt/hd_root, mount it on /mnt/hd_root/boot
mount --bind /dev /mnt/hd_root/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/hd_root/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/hd_root/sys
chroot /mnt/hd_root/
grub-mkconfig –o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-install /dev/sda
Use mkswap and swapon to setup the swap area
If network MAC addresses have changed, modify /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules to delete corresponding entries (e.g. eth0) so that they are regenerated on next boot
Last Update: 01. Oktober 2015
