1. Mondorescue and PXE Stuff I took a few of days of googling
and playing around to work out.
Simon Lyall
Linux.conf.au 2009 Sysadmin Miniconf

2. Mondorescue Backup and recovery tool
Creates bootable images of running servers
Booting images restores server hard disk.
DR orientated - OS and Apps rather than data
Images can be written to CD/DVD/USB or to network file system and booted via PXE
trac/Wiki and README.pxe documentation

3. Creating Backups # mount 10.0.0.1:/export/mondo/server1/mnt
# mondoarchive \
-On :/export/mondo/server1 \
-p server1-full \
-s 600m \
-N \ -G
# umount /mnt

4. Mount remote storage # mount 10.0.0.1:/export/mondo/server1 /mnt
# mondoarchive \
-On :/export/mondo/server1 \
-p server1-full \
-s 600m \
-N \ -G
# umount /mnt

5. Path to store # mount 10.0.0.1:/export/mondo/server1 /mnt
# mondoarchive \
-On :/export/mondo/server1 \
-p server1-full \
-s 600m \
-N \ -G
# umount /mnt

6. Prefix name of ISO's # mount 10.0.0.1:/export/mondo/server1 /mnt
# mondoarchive \
-On :/export/mondo/server1 \
-p server1-full \
-s 600m \
-N \ -G
# umount /mnt

7. Options # mount 10.0.0.1:/export/mondo/server1 /mnt # mondoarchive \
-On :/export/mondo/server1 \
-p server1-full \
-s 600m \
-N \ -G
# umount /mnt

8. Getting List of files

9. Creating ISO(s)

10. Saving ISO(s)

11. Archive Creation takeaways
Takes 3-20 minutes
-G ( gzip ) about 10% bigger but 30% faster and lower CPU impact.
Exclude Network File Systems
Keep iso size small to avoid using lots of temp space
-D ( diff backups don't notice file deletion )

12. PXE booting Rest of talk assumes you have this working at you site.
Plenty of HOWTOs
Get memtest86 booting working first.
Examples below and in those mondo docs with pretty menus use PXELINUX which is part of SYSLINUX

13. Boot

14. PXE Boot Options LABEL Mondo-full
menu label Mondo Auto Restore from backup
kernel vmlinuz-mondo
append initrd=initrd-mondo

15. Boot Options for RAM load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0
ramdisk_blocksize=1024
ramdisk_size=131072
rw root=/dev/ram iso_mode acpi=off apm=off

16. Boot options for Storage
devfs=nomount exec-shield=0
nfsmount= :/export/mondo/server1
prefix=server1-full
pxe
RESTORE
ipconf=eth0:dhcp

17. All Boot Options LABEL Mondo-full
menu label Mondo Auto Restore from backup
kernel vmlinuz-mondo
append initrd=initrd-mondo \
load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 \ ramdisk_blocksize=1024 ramdisk_size= \
rw root=/dev/ram iso_mode acpi=off apm=off \ devfs=nomount exec-shield=0 pxe \
prefix=server1-full RESTORE ipconf=eth0:dhcp \ nfsmount= :/export/mondo/server1

18. Probing Modules

19. Options at Start

20. Partitioning

21. Formatting Partitions

22. Restoring Files

23. Exit

24. PXE Options
Change the “prefix” and the “nfsmount” to select which image to boot.
“nuke” will ask no questions at the start but is interactive at end. Good for cloning.
“RESTORE” asks no questions at all. Good for unattended restores.
acpi and apm on/off options might need to be changed with some hardware

25. Restore Takeaways Restore time 5-20 minutes.
Use nuke or manual option to change settings for cheap cloning ( or put ip / hostnames in DHCP )
Can restore machines to different hardware , larger disks, etc
LVM aware

26. Overall takeaways Maintained and improving software
Good for DR restores and cheap-and-nasty cloning
Use uptodate packages on site ( most main distributions available )
Trac FAQ more uptodate than main FAQ
On screen time estimates very rough. Test in your enviroment.
Good but documentation could be better

27. Links www.mondorescue.org trac.mondorescue.org
/usr/share/docs/HOWTO.pxe