Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 08:26:49 -0500 From: "Dave [Nexus]" <dave@nexusinternetsolutions.net> To: <freebsd-isp@freebsd.org> Subject: restoring dumps from crashed drive Message-ID: <DBEIKNMKGOBGNDHAAKGNCEDOGFAC.dave@nexusinternetsolutions.net>
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recently had an unfotunate incident where a hard drive crashed after only 8 months of service. Total loss of data on the drive even after sending it in to a recovery company. At first, though annoying, it ddn't seem like a big deal since we had been religiously dumping the partitions each nigh, and had a recent 0 level dump as early as the night before. I did however find that restoring the server to its previous glory using these dumps wasn't a simple matter. The server was a 4.3 installation with the odd patch here and there to fix critical problems that came up since then. Since it was a production server, it was alway too risky to cvsup and rebuildthe entire world and risk having various data applications fail because of changes. We had boot disks, and the thought was to build a base installation, mount the backup drive(secondary hard drive), then simply run restore over the various partitions. Some of the problems we ran into were; - unable to copy various system files, kernel, etc... - restore being unable to find files and trees referred to by symbolic link (which at first I figured would be solved by simply running it twice once the files were there to be linked to) - and other peculiarities. Bottom line is we ended up ditching it, installing a 4.8, cvsup to 4.9, then rebuilding the server by hand, and copying user data over. We are still trying to get database files restored which are problematic because of the massive changes in the various MySQL and PostgreSQL since previous versions. Aside from the nice dump/restore examples, does anyone have a real world situation where they could discuss the proceedures they did to restore a server from backup, assuming total loss of the primary drive. For the type of hosting we are doing, having a backup that can be restored within 12-24 hours is sufficient, which is why we went this route in the first place. If dump/restore cannot handle a complete server, we have to look at alternatives. Appreciate any comments or feedback on this. Dave
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