How To Back Up An Ubuntu 8.10 System With SystemImager - Page 2

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5 Create A Boot CD

SystemImager lets you install images on systems that have nothing installed on it. But we have to tell such a system where to get the image from. This can be done with a boot CD. To create the boot .iso image (which you can then burn onto a CD), run the following command:

Server:

si_mkautoinstallcd -append "IMAGESERVER=192.168.0.100 IMAGENAME=my_golden_client" --out-file /home/administrator/image.iso

Please fill in the correct values for the image server and the image name and specify an output directory of your choice in --out-file.

You will be asked for a "flavor". Please type in the name of the golden image:

Here is a list of available flavors:

my_golden_client
standard

Which flavor would you like to use? [standard]: <-- my_golden_client

6 Restore Image/Install Image On A New System

Server:

On the image server, execute the following command:

/etc/init.d/systemimager-server-rsyncd start

Be sure that port 873 TCP can be accessed from the outside (firewall!).

Client:

Now insert your boot CD into the system and boot from it. Your new system will install the image my_golden_client automagically, and you are done!

Server:

After the image has been successfully restored, you can stop rsyncd:

/etc/init.d/systemimager-server-rsyncd stop

7 Update An Image

Let's say you have made some important changes to your golden client, and now you want to update your previously created image my_golden_client. The steps are the same as in chapter 4:

Client:

On the golden client, run

si_prepareclient --server 192.168.0.100

(Make sure your firewall allows connections to port 873!)

Server:

On the image server, run

si_getimage -golden-client 192.168.0.101 -image my_golden_client -ip-assignment replicant

8 Delete An Image

Server:

If you want to delete an image on your image server, simply run

si_rmimage my_golden_client

(my_golden_client should be replaced with the name of the image to be deleted.)

9 Links

SystemImager: http://wiki.systemimager.org/index.php/Main_Page
Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/

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From: admin

No, they are not. Please take a second look.

From: Anonymous

Aren't figure one and figure two on page one identical? I see no relatime in line six of figure one.

From: Anonymous

Wouldn't it just be easier to use Clonezilla Live?

From:

Request!

Since CD/DVD-players, due to their size, are a little bit inconvenient to handle, I would love to read a "How To" made for booting a USB flash disk as well.

From:

Well, I tried clonezilla, and a few other "image" backup software, and they all failed to re-size the partitions during a restore. The only software I found that did a good image backup/restore was Acronis TrueImage. It has full network support, and I was able to backup my Perfect Server/Ubuntu 8.04/ISPConfig/Ventrilo/Dyndns/PHP, etc from a 40GB drive to an image on a Windows machine, and then restore it to a 80GB drive and automatically restored everything to the 80GB drive, using all the available disk space.

Most of the image backup tools for Linux seem to want exact disk-disk copies (same size), or restore the original image with only original disk space allocated (ie restore 40GB to 80GB drive, but Ubuntu only sees the 40GB ext3 partition- rest is unused). Being somewhat green to Linux, I just didn't want to play around with partition resizing on a working system

I have not tried systemimager as noted in this howto, but will someday - If it works, great. But if you can find a copy of Acronis, try it. I believe they may even have a 15 day trial demo (has to be installed on Windows - then make a boot CD. Boot CD is Linux based anyway) I'm not trying to promote it or anything, just my relate my experience on finding something that would do a full image restore that worked for me..