[ILUG] BareBones system recovery backup apps

[Conor Daly]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 11:29:24PM +0100 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Conor Wynne thought:
> > I'm looking at mondorescue for sure...  We just got our new applications
> > server {runs all the applications that talk to our Climate database and
> > {for the first time} it's a Dell Poweredge 2850 machine running RHEL {last
> 
> Are you running X86 or X86_64?

X86
 
> > three machines were Solaris}.  I ran a mondoarchive backup yesterday and
> > did a test restore and all was well...  nearly.  mondo couldn't find my
> > boot loader at backup time so I told it to use GRUB and that it lived on
> > /dev/sda3 {RHEL /boot partition} '-l GRUB -f /dev/sda3'.  At restore time,
> > mondo put GRUB into /dev/sda3 but put nothing into the MBR on /dev/sda so
> > we were left with an unbootable system.  A bit of chrooting and
> > grub-install jiggery pokery later and we had the system back but with GRUB
> > in the MBR instead of Dell's bootloader.
> 
> OK, so why not simply dump the DOSA (Dell openmanage server assistant) CD?
> I usually do so as it does not allow for custom disk partitioning. And
> since the apps are all available for download, I just don't bother.

'cos I'm not the admin.  I find myself in the position of linux-guru to
our new (still novice) admin but he gets to call the shots.  A very tough
experience for me who's used to screwing around with my machines...

Our DOSA CD allowed us to adjust partition sizes (for a predefined set (/
/home /usr /boot)) and allowed two more optional partitions to be defined.
Mind you, only on the primary disk.  The second disk (raid 5 900Gb) was
partitioned by hand.

Do you retain the Dell Diagnostic partition?  Presumably if we have a
fault, Dell support will ask us to boot that first...  Grub can easily
chainload that so Dell's bootloader is not necessary.
 
> Go get yerself the latest RHEL cd's from
> https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/download_isos.pxt

In the plan once we figure out what support we're buying.  Speaking to
RedHat somebody said: "Dell clients usually buy their RH support through
Dell.  You might want to see can you upgrade your RH support through
them."  OTOH, Dell seem to be selling only 3-incident RH support with the
system and didn't offer any ongoing RH support (only the RHN
subscription).  Once we figure this out, we'll buy a support subscription
and I'll start harvesting isos...
 
> The latest iso's have all the drivers you will require all magically in
> the default kernels. But why not go for RHEL4 instead? Its "free" ;-0
> https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/channels/downloads.pxt?cid=2875

I'll certainly be moving our devel server to RHEL4, primarily because of
mount.cifs so I can test a free terminal server as a contrast to the
Citrix server currently being piloted.  I'll see if I can persuade our
admin to move the apps server across too.  What's the best migration plan
there?  At present, nothing has been done with the system so we could do a
direct install.  Later, we might want to use the upgrade option.  Does
this work well?  Suppose I can ask RH about that...
 
> I assume you have already registered your product ID here :
> https://www.redhat.com/apps/activate/
 
Any minute now.  If we buy support direct from RH, we'll have a spare RHN
key (which came with the server) which I'll use for the devel machine.  I
don't want to activate that on the server and then have key juggling to do
later...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
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Hobbiton.cod.ie
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