What is Make CD-ROM Recovery (mkCDrec)?
mkCDrec makes a bootable (El Torito) disaster
recovery image (CDrec.iso), including backups of the linux system
to the same CD-ROM (or CD-RW) if space permits, or to a multi-volume
CD-ROM set. Otherwise, the backups can be stored on another local disk,
NFS disk or (remote) tape.
After a disaster (disk crash or system intrusion) the system can be
booted from the CD-ROM and one can restore the complete system as it
was
(at the time mkCDrec was run) with the command /etc/recovery/start-restore.sh
Disk cloning (clone-dsk.sh script) allows one to
restore a disk to another disk (the destination disk does not have to
be
of the same size as it calculates the partition layout itself). A
thrid script, restore-fs.sh, will restore only one filesystem
to
a partition of your choice, and the user can choose with which
filesystem the partition has to be formatted.
Linux 2.2.x, 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels are supported,
and if size of the kernel is not too big a boot floppy can be
made, otherwise a 2.88 Mb boot floppy will be emulated on CD-ROM.
MkCDrec supports ext2 , ext3, minix, xfs , jfs, reiserfs file systems, LVM and software
RAID
(multiple devices). Each file system is backed up as a compressed tar
archive (including the tar log). The compress program used is the
user's choice (compress, gzip, bzip2, lzop,...)
But there is more: msdos, fat, vfat and ntfs
mounted partitions are recognized and are saved as compressed dumps (on
CD, tape, etc.)
The user has the possibility to encrypt all backups with openssl if
desired (see the Config.sh configuration file for more information).
To restore your system completely just boot from
the first CD-ROM made by mkCDrec and type "/etc/recovery/start-restore.sh
" to restore everything from CD. Automatic Disaster Recovery and One
Button Disaster Recovery are supported by mkCDrec too.
With the clone-dsk.sh script
one can restore selective a disk or partitions to another free disk.
mkCDrec supports IDE (inclusive ATA), S-ATA and
SCSI disks,
hardware RAID based disks (e.g. Compaq SMART2 Disk Array), LVM and
software RAID. With an El-Torito CD-ROM you can boot from an IDE or
SCSI
based CD-ROM drive on IA32/64, powermac, Sparc and x86_64 GNU/Linux
based
computer systems.
The mkCDrec Utilities
,
which can make of a mkCDrec CD an added value rescue CD-ROM , are
optional. See the utilities page to learn more about those tools.
However, the mkCDrec Utilities have no impact on any disaster recovery
or cloning functionality. MkCDrec detects the presence of the
utilities automatically and will link the proper tools.
Goals & Philosophy
- mkCDrec Project Philosophy:
Combine a bootable rescue CD-ROM with disaster recovery scripts and
optional utilities .
How do we get there? With a simple "make" command ;-) -
mkCDrec is an Open Source software development project.
By releasing mkCDrec under the GPL , IT3 Consultants is supporting the
development of Open
Source software. - mkCDrec main goal is to recover from a
broken system as quickly as possible.
Read the "introduction" to have a more
in-depth knowledge on goals and prerequisites. For the impatient among
us, check out the "Installation and getting
started" document too.
Getting mkCDrec
See our downloads page for information
about how to get the latest MkCDrec release.
Contributions and Feedback
We want to hear from from people using and developing for mkCDrec. We
want to see your modifications and understand any problems you
encounter. Please see our SourceForge site
for information about contacting us, including the development mailing
list.
Developers are encouraged to use our
CVS tree at SourceForge.
Donations are welcome to sponsor our development on new
hardware (AMD64, IA64,...)
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