Installing MondoRescue. System Backup for bare-metal recovery of Linux

Mondo is a GPL disaster recovery solution to create backup media (CD, DVD, tape, network images) that can be used to redeploy the damaged system, as well as deploy similar or less similar systems. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore all of your data [or as much as you want], from bare metal if necessary. Mondo is in use by Lockheed-Martin, Nortel Networks, Siemens, HP, IBM, NASA’s JPL, the US Dept of Agriculture, dozens of smaller companies, and tens of thousands of users. The backup media is created while the system is up and running. Those coming from an HP-UX background may liken MondoRescue to Ignite-UX.

Installing MondoRescue on Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install mondo

Installed version: 2.2.7-2

Installing MondoRescue on Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS / ScientificLinux

Mondo is available from the RPMForge repository.

# yum install mondo

Installed version: 2.2.4

Installing the latest version of MondoRescue is highly recommended. The current release of Mondo is 2.2.8-1, and can be obtained from the MondoRescue repository

Install the following binary packages suited for your distribution if they are available at the MondoRescue repository (i.e. afio and buffer are sometimes unavailable meaning that they are not required):

• afio
• buffer
• mindi
• mindi-busybox
• mondo
• mondo-doc

The previous binary packages can be installed from the command line with these commands:

• RPM based Linux distributions (Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, etc): rpm -ivh *.rpm (as root)
  
• DEB based Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, etc): dpkg -i *.deb (run as root or “sudo dpkg -i *.deb” on Ubuntu)

Most of the time, you’ll be able to download directly the packages suited for your distribution. Currently Mondorescue.org provides packages for :

• RedHat 7.3, 9.
• Fedora Core 4, Core 5, Core 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 .
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3, 4, 5.
• Mandriva 10.1, 10.2, 2006.0, 2007.0, 2007.1., 2008.0, 2008.1, 2009.0
• OpenSuSE 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.0, 11.1. Look also at this web page for SuSE details. Packman may have some useful additional packages.
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, 10.
• Asianux 2, 3.
• Debian 3.1, 4.0, 5.0. Look also at this web page for Debian details.
• Ubuntu 6.04, 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10.
• Gentoo nover.
• Slackware 10.2, 11.0.

Older packages are also on the ftp site to help for some old fashion distros/versions.

Running mondoarchive and mondorestore

Run mondoarchive as root or with “sudo” on Ubuntu. The following screenshots show how to create an ISO based backup media:

Now we have an ISO image that can be burnt into a DVD. Our system can be easily redeployed or restored by booting from this DVD. To format and restore all files automatically type “nuke” <ENTER> at the boot prompt (bare-metal recovery).

To restore you also have mondorestore.

NOTE – For migrations in a production environment it’s good practice to use a temporary IP address on the machine to be backed up. This will mean users and services can’t connect to the server during the backup.
NOTE – As the archival is done live on the system, you may want to stop all processes maintaining coherent information, such as RDBMS systems for which the operation could cause a synchronisation data issue.

Video: Bare-metal recovery from CD

Podcast:

Mondo Rescue and Ample

References:

http://www.mondorescue.org
MondoRescue HOWTO
HOWTO run mondo interactively using cron
Bare-metal restore
Linux P2V (physical to virtual) migrations using mondorescue by Hewlett Packard