From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 2 22:07:32 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D3FD9106564A for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2011 22:07:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from wonkity.com (wonkity.com [67.158.26.137]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 944298FC15 for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2011 22:07:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from wonkity.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wonkity.com (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id p22M7Vme062130; Wed, 2 Mar 2011 15:07:31 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from localhost (wblock@localhost) by wonkity.com (8.14.4/8.14.4/Submit) with ESMTP id p22M7Vu6062127; Wed, 2 Mar 2011 15:07:31 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 15:07:31 -0700 (MST) From: Warren Block To: Ed Flecko In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.6 (wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:07:31 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fastest way to get an entire FBSD system back online? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:07:32 -0000 On Wed, 2 Mar 2011, Ed Flecko wrote: > Hi folks, > I confess I'm more familiar with "Windows" and for years I have > "Ghosted" PCs as a very fast way to get an entire PC back online in > the event of a drive failure. I can easily get a PC back online within > the hour using "ghost" (or some drive imaging software). > > Is there something similar in the FBSD arena?...some form of "backing > up" a server so that if a drive fails, upon replacement of the > drive(s), the OS can be very quickly recovered from a backup (of some > sort), or from an image, etc.? > > What options are available??? Suggestions??? It depends on what filesystem you're using. For UFS, there are two basic ways. Copy at the block level or the filesystem level. The first would be dd(1), the second dump(8)/restore(8). There are third-party backup programs like (beta) versions of Clonezilla (http://www.clonezilla.org) that understand the filesystems and try to copy only used blocks but include MBRs and other information. For speed of an image restore, dd(8) using a zero-filled image might be fastest, and will restore the MBR or GPT and slices and everything. I have a little bit of information about dd and Clonezilla and a lot more about dump in http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/backup.html