NAME
mondoarchive - a backup / disaster-recovery tool.
SYNOPSIS
mondoarchive -O [ options ] : backup your PC
mondoarchive -V [ options ] : verify your backup
DESCRIPTION
mondoarchive backs up a subset of your files, your entire filesystem,
or even images of non-Linux filesystems to CD’s, tape, ISO images or an
NFS mount. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to
restore everything, taking a PC from bare metal to its original state
if necessary.
With -O, it backs up your filesystem to CD, tape, ISO images or NFS
share. Boot media or a special boot CD will be created to allow you to
restore from bare metal if necessary.
With -V, it verifies the backup against the live filesystem. This
option may be used in combination with -O to verify a backup after its
creation, or on its own to see how much the live filesystem has changed
since the backup was made.
Call mondoarchive without flags to make it auto-detect as many settings
as possible, ask you politely for the rest, and then backup and verify
your OS or a subset thereof.
To restore data, either run mondorestore from the command line or boot
from the emergency media generated during the backup process. The
latter will come in handy if a gremlin wipes your hard disk.
BACKUP MEDIA
You must specify one of the following:-
-c speed Use CD-R drive as backup device and its (write-once) disks
as backup media.
-w speed Use CD-RW drive as backup device and its (write/rewrite)
disks as backup media. Mondo will wipe media before
writing to them.
-r Use DVD drive as backup device and its disks as backup
media. Growisofs decides on the best speed for your drive.
Note that calling mondoarchive using sudo when writing to
DVDs will fail because growisofs does not support this -
see the growisofs manpage for details.
-C speed Use CD-R drive as a streaming device, almost like a tape
streamer. Use write-once disks as backup media.
Experimental.
-p prefix Use prefix to generate the name of your ISO images. By
default, mondoarchive names images mondorescue-1.iso,
mondorescue-2.iso, ... Using -p machine will name your
images machine-1.iso, machine-2.iso, ...
-i Use ISO files (CD images) as backup media. This is good
for backing up your system to a spare hard drive. The -n
switch is a wiser choice if you plan to restore from a
remote filesystem.
-n mount Use files residing on NFS partition as backup media.
mount is the remote mount-point, e.g.
’192.168.1.3:/home/nfs’ for my file server. Please mount
it before backing up/verifying.
-t Use tape streamer as backup device and its tapes as backup
media.
-U Use a generic USB device as backup device. Use this if you
want to write your backup to a USB key or USB disk, which
will be make bootable. The USB device should be attached
to the system ir order for this to work and its device
name passed to the -d option. WARNING: All the data on
the related device will be removed.
-u Use a generic streaming device as backup device. Use this
if you want to write your backup to a device that is not
directly support by mondoarchive. This will send the data
directly to a raw device. For experienced users only.
MAJOR OPTIONS
-D Make a differential backup: examine the filesystem and
find which files have changed since the last full backup
was carried out. Backup only those files.
-E path ...
Exclude path(s) from backup. The paths should be separated
with a whitespace. Note that mondo automatically excludes
removable media (/mnt/floppy, /mnt/cdrom, /proc, /sys,
/tmp). For example, if you are backing up to an NFS mount
but you do not want to include the contents of the mount
in a backup, exclude your local mount-point with this
switch. It will also work with partitions, e.g. /dev/sdd4
if you have a peculiar SCSI zip drive which insists on
showing up in the mountlist. NB: If you exclude /dev/sdd4
then the /dev entry itself will still be backed up, even
though the mountlist entry will be suppressed. N.B.: If
you specify a directory with a final / its content will be
archived so it won’t do what you expect. You may also
specify full disk device to this option as with -E
“/dev/sda /dev/cciss/c0d0”
-I path ...
Include paths(s) in backup. The default backup path is “/”
but you may specify alternatives, e.g. -I “/home /etc” to
override that. You may also specify full disk device to
this option as with -I “/dev/sda /dev/cciss/c0d0”
-J file Specify an explicit list of files and directories to
include in a plain text file, one item (file or directory)
per line. Beware that directories placed in that file are
not managed recursively contrary to what is done with the
-I option.
-N Exclude all mounted network filesystems. This currently
means NFS, SMB, Coda, MVFS, AFS OCFS and Netware. In other
words, only backup the local hard disk(s).
-d dev|dir Specify the backup device (CD/tape/USB) or directory
(NFS/ISO). For CD-R[W] drives, this is the SCSI node where
the drive may be found, e.g. ’0,1,0’. For tape users, this
is the tape streamers /dev entry, e.g. ’/dev/st0’. For USB
users, this is the device name of your key or external
disk. For ISO users, this is the directory where the ISO
images are stored. For NFS users, this is the directory
within the NFS mount where the backups are stored. The
default for ISO and NFS is ’/var/cache/mondo’.
-g GUI mode. Without this switch, the screen output of
mondoarchive is suitable for processing by an ’expect’
wrapper, enabling the user to backup nightly via a cron
job. However, if you want to run this program with an
attractive but non-cron-friendly interface then use ’-g’.
-k path Path of user’s kernel. If you are a Debian or Gentoo user
then specify -k FAILSAFE as your kernel. Otherwise, you
will rarely need this option.
-m Manual (not self-retracting) CD trays are often found on
laptops. If you are a laptop user, your CD burner has
BurnProof technology or you experience problems with mondo
then please call mondoarchive with this switch.
-o Use OBDR (One Button Disaster Recovery) type of tapes. By
default, tapes are not bootable. With this flag, tape will
be made bootable following the OBDR format.
-s size How much can each of your backup media hold? You may use
’m’ and ’g’ on the end of the number, e.g. ’700m’ for an
extra-large CD-R. You no longer need to specify the size
of your cartridges if you are backing up to tape.
-x dev ... Specify non-Linux partitions which you want to backup,
e.g. NTFS or BeOS.
MINOR OPTIONS
-[0-9] Specify the compression level. Default is 3. No
compression is 0.
-A command This command will be called after each CD/NFS/ISO file is
written. It is useful if you want to do something with an
ISO after creating it, e.g. write it to a CD burner using
a non-standard command. -A understands two tokens - _ISO_
and _CD#_ - which will be translated into the ISO’s
filename and its index number (1, 2, ...) respectively.
So, you could use -A foobackup _ISO_; rm -f _ISO_ to
feed each ISO to some magical new backup tool.
-B command This command will be called before each CD/NFS/ISO file is
written. See -A for more information.
-H When you boot from the tape/CD, your hard drive will be
wiped and the archives will be restored. Your decision to
boot from the tape/CD will be taken as consent. No further
permission will be sought. Use with caution.
-L Use lzo, a fast compression engine, instead of bzip2. You
may find lzo on Mondo’s website or via FreshMeat. WARNING!
Some versions of LZO are unstable.
-G Use gzip, the standard and quicker Linux compression
engine, instead of bzip2.
-R EXPERIMENTAL. Do not use in mission-critical environments.
Star is an alternative to afio. Mondo now supports POSIX
ACLs and extended attributes, so -R is essentially
redundant for now.
-P tarball Post-nuke tarball. If you boot into Nuke Mode and
everything is restored successfully then the post-nuke
script will be sought and executed if found. This is
useful for post-restore customization. It is assumed that
the tarball (.tar.gz format) will contain not just the
post-nuke script (or binary, or whatever it is) but also
any files it requires.
-S path Specify the full pathname of the scratchdir, the directory
where ISO images are built before being archived. If you
have plenty of RAM and want to use a ramdisk for scratch
space, specify its path here.
-T path Specify the full pathname of the tempdir, the directory
where temporary files (other than ISO images being
assembled) are stored. See -S
-W Don’t make your backup self-booting. This is a really bad
idea, IMO. Don’t do this unless you have really great boot
disks in your hand and you are an anally retentive SOB who
can’t wait 2 minutes for Mindi to run in the background.
If you use -W then you’d better know what the hell you’re
doing, okay?
-b Specify the internal block size used by the tape drive.
This is usually 32K but some drives just don’t like that.
They should but they don’t. That’s what happens when tape
drive vendors don’t talk to kernel driver writers. Try 512
or 16384.
-e Don’t eject the CD or tape when backing up...
-f device Specify the drive on which your Master Boot Record lives.
Usually, this is discovered automatically.
-l GRUB|LILO|ELILO|RAW
Specify the boot loader. By default, your Master Boot
Record is examined and the boot loader can usually be
discovered. If you specify RAW then the MBR will be backed
up and restored byte-for-byte without any analysis. It is
likely that you will also need to specify the boot device
with -f <dev>. ELILO is mandatory for IA64 machines.
-Q Give more detailed information about the boot loader.
-K loglevel Specify the loglevel. Use 99 for full debug. Standard
debug level is 4.
-z Use extended attributes and acl for each file and store
them in the backup media. Use this option if you use
SElinux e.g. but it will slow down backup and restore time
of course.
DIAGNOSTICS
Mondo generates one additional, and extremely important file:
/var/log/mondoarchive.log. When seeking technical support, attach this
file to your email.
FILES
/var/log/mondoarchive.log This log contains important information
required to analyse mondoarchive problem reports. Did I already said
that it’s highly recommended to send this file with support questions.
NOTES
A link to Mondo’s HTML-based manual (by Bruno Cornec, Mikael Hultgren,
Cafeole, Randy Delphs, Stan Benoit, and Hugo Rabson) may be found at
http://www.mondorescue.org/docs.shtml - or in /usr/share/doc/mondo-x.xx
on your hard drive.
BUGS
It is recommend that your system has more than 64 MB ram. SCSI device
order change with nuke can have unexpected results. It is recommended
you use expert mode with drastic hardware reconfigurations.
EXAMPLES
ISO: Backup to a directory; note that /mnt/foo’s contents will be
backed up except for its ISO’s unless you exclude it, as follows:-
mondoarchive -Oi -d /mnt/foo -E /mnt/foo /mnt/foo2 -p
`hostname`-`date +%Y-%m-%d`
Backup to ISO’s non-interactively, e.g. as a job running in
/etc/cron.daily:
mkdir -p /bkp/`date +%A`; mondoarchive -Oi -9 -d /bkp/`date +%A` -E
/bkp
DVD: Backup PC using DVD Media:
mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/scd0 -gF -s 4480m
TAPE: Backup to tape, using lzo compression (WARNING - can be
unstable):
mondoarchive -Ot -d /dev/st0 -L
Verify existing tape backup which was made with lzo compression:-
mondoarchive -Vt -d /dev/st0 -L -g
Backup to tape, using max compression:
mondoarchive -Ot -9 -d /dev/st0
CD-R: Backup to 700MB CD-R disks using a 16x CD burner:
mondoarchive -Oc 16 -s 700m -g
Verify existing CD-R or CD-RW backup (works for either):-
mondoarchive -Vc 16
CD-RW: Backup to 650MB CD-RW disks using a 4x CD ReWriter:
mondoarchive -Ow 4
Backup just your /home and /etc directory to 650MB CD-RW disks using a
4x CD ReWriter:
mondoarchive -Ow 4 -I /home /etc
NFS: Backup to an NFS mount:
mondoarchive -On 192.168.1.2:/home/nfs -d /Monday -E /mnt/nfs
Verify existing NFS backup:-
mondoarchive -Vn 192.168.1.2:/home/nfs -d /Monday
USB: Backup to your USB key, using gzip compression:
mondoarchive -OU -d /dev/sda -G
RAID: Backup PC to a Software Raid mount point, iso size 700mb:
mondoarchive -O -s 700m -d /mnt/raid
SEE ALSO
afio(1), bzip2(1), find(1), mindi(8), mondorestore(8).
AUTHORS
Bruno Cornec (lead-development) bruno_at_mondorescue.org
Andree Leidenfrost (co-developer) aleidenf_at_bigpond.net.au
ORIGINAL AUTHORS
Hugo Rabson (original author) hugo.rabson_at_mondorescue.org
Jesse Keating (original RPM packager) hosting_at_j2solutions.net
Stan Benoit (testing) troff_at_nakedsoul.org
Mikael Hultgren (docs) mikael_hultgren_at_gmx.net
See mailing list at http://www.mondorescue.org for technical support.