by Hello all. I have a question(Well, OK, SEVERAL! :) about crash
recovery of a root-mounted software raid filesystem. I think I have decided
on choice #1, below, but the rest is a little background on what I am trying
to do.
I have a system running Redhat 6.2 with a raid partition mounted as
root( / ). The "/boot" partition is a separate partition(hda1).
There are 2 drives in the system, so I am using raid-1 between 2-4GB
partitions, /dev/hda2 and /dev/hdc2. The system has been working
great for over a year--that's not my problem. I need to devise a
method of backing up and restoring this system in the event of a total
system failure(both HDs die, the computer gets doused with water,
etc...). I will have to be able to guide someone with limited
computer knowledge throught the process over the phone. There are
some downsides to going away to college. :)
OK, there's the basic idea, here's what I've got:
I currently back up "/" to a samba share on another machine via a
quick script that tars it up, gzips it, and sends it over the network.
However, I do not yet have a method of restoring the machine from
scratch. I need a floppy with the raidtools on it that supports
mounting a network samba share. I have used Mulinux
(http://sunsite.dk/mulinux/) to do this with much success on non-raid
systems. So, I have a few options:
1. Since I back up frequently, I really don't need to have a
raid array and could use the extra space. How can I "downgrade"
from the raid to standard partitions? I do have another HD that I
could
borrow from another computer to help in the copying, if needed.
2. Can anyone suggest another solution that will do what I need?
I kind of favor #1, as it would simplify things greatly. I would not notice
any difference in performance.
Thanks for the help,
Jacob Joseph
If possible, CC responses to my e-mail.