Make Your Own Recovery CD

noff · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 5:40 pm Post subject: Make Your Own Recovery CD

Would anyone else like to see a way developed to automatically make a livecd for you system? Basically I would like to have an automated way of generating a stage 3 livecd, custom setup for your system. It would backup /etc, your kernel, your portage cache and world file, your system, X and some other large packages according to your use variables. You could then boot into it and use it as a regular livecd or do emerge restore. Emerge restore would reinstall your system according to your portage cache, cp /etc. It could also be setup to format / partition according your fstab. Additional options could be added like backing up /home.

After it were setup it could automatically generate an livecd-timestamp.iso. The goal would be if your system got trashed you could install quickly. It would have the additional benefits of making setups easier across identical machines, which would be handy in business.

Any ideas of how difficult this would be. How anyone else use this?
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axxackall · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 6:04 pm Post subject:

Customized LiveCD is a better (or sometimes the only) way when you want to install on the hardware which requires the kernel different than on vanilla LiveCD. Sometimes the attempt to modprobe or to compile every possible driver doesn't work well.

krusty_ar · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 6:25 pm Post subject:

It would be an easy way of compiling gentoo in one box and intall in other, but I don't know how hard it will be to do so
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Mindstab · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 7:29 pm Post subject: goodness

This would be handy, because, for instance, then gentoo kernel doesn't boot my laptop... I'mp retty happy with openbsd on it, but if the situation comes up again, customization would be handy.
Also to be able to take a tailored linux environment with me would rule.

noff · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:05 pm Post subject:

Just to clarify, what I had in mind would be generated my a user from an existing system. It would be for backup or personal installations. The goal would not be to have Gentoo.org make it or support it.

My main intention is a simple way to backup and restore your system using the power of portage.
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What Larry was saying is that if you make it too easy for programmers, then poor programmers will be able to do things best left to good programmers, and will inevitably do them poorly. Everyone will suffer in the long term as a result." - Tom Chance

thegarbageman · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 10:02 pm Post subject:

I have used the livecd-ng package in the portage tree to make my own custom live cds. My favorite includes an openmosix kernel for quickly adding nodes to my cluster. Another includes the driver for the FastTrak RAID controller so I can mount my partitions. Also, I like to use mc instead of nano or nvi, so I have that on there too. The livecd-ng package needed a little tweaking to get it to work.

noff · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 9:24 pm Post subject:

Is there any sort of documentation to livecd-ng? There isn't a man page and google strikes out.
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What Larry was saying is that if you make it too easy for programmers, then poor programmers will be able to do things best left to good programmers, and will inevitably do them poorly. Everyone will suffer in the long term as a result." - Tom Chance

noff · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 10:38 pm Post subject:

On first look, and this is only a first look, it appears that only three things would need to be changed in the livecd in order to use as a system restoration device.

1. Change the kernel you want to use to you personal kernel. This is important for people who patch their own kernels, especially for harware reasons. Along these lines module.autoload can be added as well as network and hardware config files. This should be straighforward and easily automated.

2. Build a new stage2/3 tarball to replace the ones on the cd. This would include the built programs from you computer that would normally be in a stage 2. This stage 2 would also include your /etc, and your portage directories from make.conf, and your portage cache. This should be easily scriptable.

3. Make a nice script to tie them all together. gentoo-backup would generate the livecd using livecd-ng and the above files. gentoo-restore would be on the livecd and run the necessary steps to reinstall. That would primarily just involve emerge --usepkg world. Since the portage tree on the cd would be a snapshot, if packages had been made and saved they could be reinstalled quickly, bringing the system up in little time.

I think this sort of system restoration would be a welcome addition for when you mess things up. It isn't a replacement for data backups, but it would allow desktop system resoration to be much quicker. It would allow people that once they got a working system up keep that in case kde-cvs wipes it out. It may also make people more brave to beta test if they think they can restore their whole system in two hours.

I am not a coder but I would be willing to do a lot of the leg work if anyone would want to try to put this together.

I really believe if gentoo had this sort of functionality it would be another great reason to use it. Gentoo is the only platform where this could really effectively be implemented, since it is made from the ground up. It also appears that most of the ools are there they just need to brought togther by a capable programmer.
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What Larry was saying is that if you make it too easy for programmers, then poor programmers will be able to do things best left to good programmers, and will inevitably do them poorly. Everyone will suffer in the long term as a result." - Tom Chance

phong · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2003 4:56 am Post subject:

This sounds like a cool idea (if a a bit tricky to implement). One issue I could see as being a problem is software installed outside of portage. Should /usr/local and /opt be backed up as well?
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antik · Apprentice Joined: 01 Oct 2002 Posts: 212

noff · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2003 7:55 pm Post subject:

Ghosting is usually a better solution for backup. But ghosting 100+ GB is a lot of cdrs. A server is different from a desktop. Most webservers and the like have lower storage requirements. The forum is only a couple hundred megs and downtime is crucially important. Fileservers should already have backups in place. For most personal computers, they have large quantities of data, but most of it is static. Music collections and other media only need a periodic backup. So the idea for some people to burn 150 CD-RWs every week is a hassle, especially if most of the data doesn't change. The main thing that would change is /home and the system. I think that is why a lot of people would benefit. Because now they would only have 1 cd for their system and would just have to backup /home, assuming they do lower frequency data backups.

But I would agree ghosting for servers is a good idea and most servers should have raid or tape or something to really secure and reduce downtime.
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What Larry was saying is that if you make it too easy for programmers, then poor programmers will be able to do things best left to good programmers, and will inevitably do them poorly. Everyone will suffer in the long term as a result." - Tom Chance

axxackall · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2003 8:05 pm Post subject:

Decibels · Veteran Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Posts: 1623 Location: U.S.A.

Does livecd-ng work as good as the Debian bootcd program?
I have made a livecd with it and works great, slower than a harddrive though. Built it wil mozilla, blackbox, konqueror, gedit,.. all on one cd.

Kept hoping for a gentoo ebuild on it. I might have to try umasking the livecd-ng.