I have experience with making bootable images of AIX systems using mksysb and wondered if there was some type of equivalent software for Linux. Or perhaps some of the folks here have alternatives or unique ideas for how they are backing up their Linux systems enabling them to recover them as quickly as possible. I am looking to experiment on what some of the best ways to recover the operating systems and data may be.
What sense is 'system image' meant in? Does AIX bring the system offline and make an image of the entire hard drive, or is it doing something else?
AIX mksysb writes the current kernel and system to tape (may now to cdrom ?), there are several
programms for linux that work the same way. ask google for g4l, ghost4linux etc.
since PC do not support booting from tape you will find no programms but all other types (dvd,cdrom,usb,...)
We've been using Storix for about a year. It was created by the guys who created and refined the mksysb code for IBM.
It has a central server which retrieves the data and creates a boot CD. You go to the fresh machine, boot the CD and it automatically negotiates the connection with the central server and rebuilds the system. We use it to do across the 'net OS level backups and create a duplicate system if necessary (such as when you have four web servers and want to add a fifth configured the same; boot the CD, give it the new info and the server's up). It's pretty sweet and as far as I know, we haven't experienced a problem with it.
Carl
Aix is a unix based os developed by IBM and was originally released in the mid 80s for PC RT. When IBM released the RS/6000 in 1992, it released AIX 3.1 and built in is a mksysb script to do a full rootvg or OS backup. Other volume groups are not touched by this script. It was aimed at scsi tape drives. When booted from tape, the system would be restore rootvg to exactly what it contained when it was backed up. When finished, the system reboots. IBM never supported writing to cd but went directly to dvd. A mksysb can be written to dvd and then booted and restored from dvd. This function would be VERY helpful to linux releases or unix released. What was described earlier is simillar to a product in AIX called Network Install Manager - nim. Using nim, a root user can do a bootable backup to a remote system and then restore from that system. A nim restore is the fastest form of installing AIX and is used by manufacturing to preload systems. Today, at AIX 6.1, nim and mksysb are mature and trusted processes. Non rootvg volume groups are backed up using savevg. savevg is better than tar as it creates logical volumes the correct size and correctly names the mount points and then restores the data. Again, its a mature process. Even open files are backed up with mksysb and savevg although any save to the file after its backed up isn't reflected. A mksysb has 3 components, A boot image, a complete list of files and the actual backup. When the mksysb is taken, it compares what is on the list to what is on the tape in the backup. They must agree. Again, the same for linux would be helpful. I am looking for one for an OS backup of Fedora Core 9 or 10. I believe the linux developers like Red Hat or SUSE or Debian, are best equipped to create such a backup program as they best know their own OS.
I should add that AIX uses an interface called smit (System Management Interface Tool) and this interface hides the commands that are developed based on parameters that are chosen. Having said that, many commands can be run from the command line and mksysb is one of them. A simple icon could be easily created to initiate a backup of the OS to a DVD. Since the restored files are exactly the same as the original files, the restored system will behave exactly as original system does. Everything will work as it did before the backup was taken, there is no reconfiguration of any kind needed.
SMIT works in both graphical and terminal or tty mode as long as the terminal is correctly defined to the system.
Mondo Rescue - GPL disaster recovery solution
Another option is LVM snapshot for your system/important directories and then tar/pipe them to lzma (faster/better than bzip2). You can write the scripts yourself or search for somebody else's on google.
LVM snapshotting allows you to also capture the logical volumes and only needs the space that the delta data would require. You can back up the snapshot and ensure a consistent state, then destroy the snapshot.
This may be true but it misses the heart of the matter, the ability to create a bootable backup of a linux system allowing the complete restore of the system to the same as it was when the backup was taken. Disks do not last forever and not everyone has the ability to install 2 disks and run a mirrored configuration. I can not speak for other versions but Fedora Core does provide an excellent raid 1 setup at the time of install. Its what I run only because there is no mksysb equivalent that I am aware of. If one disk fails then the system will continue to run and I can replace that disk at a time that is convenient to me. This is something that the developers or creators of the various versions of linux should consider doing and imbedding into their releases or adding as an update to existing releases. In AIX, its a script. I believe it is do-able but I don't have the skills. The linux community should push the developers for such a tool with both tape and dvd as the backup media. In AIX, I can create a bootable backup to either tape or DVD. I usually use tape but I can use both, boot from DVD and then point to tape for the restore of the OS. I might add that the same mksysb boot stops at a menu and one option will allow some repair work to be performed if there is filesystem corruption or jfs2 log problems that prevent a system boot. Linux has done a lot of maturing in the last 15 years and its making inroads into the windows community (its even become windows like). In order to become the dominant operating system, it needs more user friendly tools. One has to remember that the vast majority of windows users are computer illiterate and knowledgeable on a few applications which they use all the time. (Browser, video player, look at photos etc) Few can actually do anything of value at an OS level so linux has to be the same. You can not create a bootable backup of windows that I am aware of so a tool like this becomes a real plus. In discussions about Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, two of the positive comments that people say about AIX are SMIT and mksysb. (IBM, btw, has licensed SMIT to other vendors). I push this mksysb idea because its the right direction to be headed.
Bundling the ability to do bare metal restores with an enterprise Linux is unlikely, hence the existence of products like storix, syncsort, etc. There's a reason you pay more for AIX.
Perhaps this is the case yet Linux has a lot of great utilities built into it which AIX does not have. Every release of linux gets better and better going from a command line only os to something which is very windows like. It had to become windows like if it ever had any ambitions to displace MS products. Being open source, there are many outside developers who could add this added value to any of the linux variants. I am of the belief that the inside developers are best equipped to do this as they know their OS inside out. Also, there is no shortage of backup solutions for AIX like tsm and veritas and these are outside AIX and cost lots of $$$.
If the linux community pushes for utilities like linux mksysb, they will be created by the owners of the variant. If one does it, the others will follow.
I don't see how 'windows-like' relates to making disk images, Windows can't do it by itself. I also think you mean a GUI interface, not actual Windows behavior, with all the bugs, security holes, bad designs that implies, not to mention a lot of Windows interfaces are a very bad fit to a UNIX system.
But making disk images in UNIX is about as simple as it can get. Drives are files. You can copy from wherever you want, to wherever you want, with dd.
You are absolutely right in saying that being windows like has nothing to do with the point I asked. I was merely expanding on the fact that linux has matured from a command line interface to a Windows like interface (GUI as you prefer) and it had to do so if it has any ambitions to displace MS products. dd is a useful tool but it has limitations. I might ask how you would
dd to a dvdrw device (scd1 in my case)? I know it can be done to tape or to
another disk but this thread deals with dvd devices. My current backup strategy is to use tar to tape but tar has a 2.0 GB file size limitation and if I
ever have a file that is larger, I would have to use pax.
Let me reitterate that I believe that the ability to create a bootable backup to DVD of a linux system (the same as mksysb is to AIX) would be a real value add to any linux distribution and would help move linux one step closer in displacing MS operating systems. The fact that Windows can't do it is a drawback to Windows and not a comparison point. Think outside the box....
X-window GUI system has existed for years on *Nix. Windows did not invent it. Also, Linux' goals (they have none, it is a kernel, with the "GNU" userland) are not to displace anything. You have something free to modify to meet your needs. You can use it as you see fit. If you like it better than Windows, then great, it meets those needs. I see no reason to bring MS or Windows into this discussion about AIX and Linux
I do think there is something like this on sourceforge, but the name escapes me for the moment.