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Cloning Production Server for Testing using DAR

Submitted by sandip on Sun, 05/29/2005 - 21:30

DAR (Disk ARchive) is a command-line backup tool, that uses compression, makes differential or full backups, which can be split over several files or disks. Dar saves all *NIX inode types, hard links, as well as Extended Attributes. And many other features...

Below are the steps on what was done to get a full archive of an external production server and restore it to a local test machine. The process can also be used for recovering from hard-disk failures.

  1. Installation:

    Download and Install:

    $ ./configure
$ make
$ su -
# make install-strip

  2. Archive:

    Do a full backup of the production server via:

    # cp `which dar_static` /path/to/archive
# dar -c /path/to/archive/full_server_backup -s 680M -z \
  -R / -P dev/pts -P proc -P path/to/archive -P "home/virtual/site*" \
  -D -m 256 -Z "*.gz" -Z "*.bz2" -Z "*.zip"
    • -c -- creates a backup with the basename of "full_server_backup"
    • -s -- size of slice (680M so the slices fit in CDs)
    • -z -- compress slices using gzip alogrithm (default compression level of 6)
    • -R -- backup path
    • -P -- exclude path
    • -D -- store excluded path as empty directories
    • -m -- minimum file size for compression
    • -Z -- exclude files from compression

  3. Restore:

    Use knoppix to boot via CD to prepare, partition and create the filesystems for restoration.

    1. Preparation

      Partition the hard-disk as needed:

      # fdisk /dev/hda1 ( 100MB for boot)
# fdisk /dev/hda2 ( 256MB for swap )
# fdisk /dev/hda3 ( rest for the system )

      Here is the final result:

      Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 776 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1        14    105808+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2            15        48    257040   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda3            49       776   5503680   83  Linux

      Inform the kernel of the new partitions:

      # partprobe /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hda3

    2. Filesystems Format
      # mke2fs -j /dev/hda1 ( ext3 filesystem )
# mkswap -c /dev/hda2 ( swap )
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda3 ( ext3 filesystem )
    3. Activate Swap 
      # swapon /dev/hda2
    4. Mount 
      # mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 ( external usb storage drive )
# mount -t ext3 /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3 
# mkdir /mnt/hda3/boot
# mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda3/boot
    5. Restore 
      # cp /mnt/sda1/dar_static /mnt/hda3/
# /mnt/hda3/dar_static -x /mnt/sda1/path/to/full_server_backup -R /mnt/hda3
# rm /mnt/hda3/dar_static
    6. Lilo Check

      Once the archive is restored, launch lilo to boot properly.

      # chroot /mnt/hda3
# lilo -v -v
# exit
    7. Reboot 
      # shutdown -r now

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Remote Restore over SSH using DAR

Submitted by sandip on Thu, 06/23/2005 - 20:12.

On the localhost where the remote backup is to be restored:

  1. Generate a ssh passwordless login key.
    $ ssh-keygen -t dsa

    Note: Press enter when prompted for password.

  2. Copy the "id_dsa.pub" to remote backup server as "authorized_keys2".
    $ scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub remote_server:./.ssh/authorized_keys2
  3. Create the named pipes "todar" and "toslave". 
    $ mkfifo /tmp/todar /tmp/toslave
  4. Run the dar_slave on remote and dar_static on local: 
    $ ssh remote_host dar_slave /path/to/backup </tmp/toslave >/tmp/todar &
$ /path/to/dar_static -x - -i /tmp/todar -o /tmp/toslave /file/to/restore1 /file/to/restore2 ... /file/to/restoreN

    Note: Leaving out the file/folder to restore path, will restore everything.

»

Remote Backup using DAR over SSH

Submitted by sandip on Fri, 06/17/2005 - 10:19.

DAR can output its archive to stdout instead of a given file. To activate it, use "-" as basename.

# ssh remote_host /path/to/dar -c - -z \
  -R / -P dev/pts -P proc -P "path/to/skip*" \
  -D -m 256 -Z "*.gz" -Z "*.bz2" -Z "*.zip" -Z "*.jpg" -Z "*.png" \
  | dar_xform -s 680M - /path/to/full_backup
»

Extended Attributes Namespace error

Submitted by sandip on Tue, 06/14/2005 - 09:51.

Use the -U and -u option to not consider user and system namespaces.

»

libattr.a error when doing make

Submitted by sandip on Sun, 06/12/2005 - 15:04.

Note: when installing dar on RHEL3 and Fedora Core 3, I had to symlink as below:

# ln -s /usr/lib/libattr.a /lib/libattr.a
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