Partition Imaging

Partimage

http://www.partimage.org/

Partition Image is a Linux/UNIX utility which saves partitions in many formats (see below) to an image file. The image file can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space, and split into multiple files to be copied on removable floppies (ZIP for example), … Partitions can be saved across the network since version 0.6.0.

Partition Image will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. For speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file. This is unlike the 'dd' command, which also copies empty blocks. Partition Image also works for large, very full partitions. For example, a full 1 GB partition can be compressed with gzip down to 400MB.

Supported file systems

name description state ext2fs/ext3fs the linux standard stable ReiserFS a new journalized and powerful file system stable FAT16/32 DOS and Windows file systems stable HPFS IBM OS/2 File System stable JFS Journalised File System, from IBM, used on Aix stable XFS another jounalized and efficient File System, from sgi, used on Irix stable

Several projects provide advanced boot/root disk and eltorito bootable CD-Rom to use partition image from a rescue disk: We recommand using SystemRescueCd since it's maitained by a member of the partimage project.

System Rescue CD http://www.sysresccd.org/download.en.php

Comment, v0.6.2 limitation

bug on bzip2 compression

Because of a bug, you won't be able to restore MBR from any bzip2 compressed image unless you manualy run bzip2 -d on them

partition size has to be exactly the same

The partition is too small to be restored:
Original partition
size:........2097414144 bytes
Destination partition
size:.....1052803584 bytes

I only have 427M used on it, which should well fit into the 1G destination drive. With this limitation, I think by now partimage is practically useless.

Help

EXAMPLE

partimage -z1 -o -d save /dev/hda12 /mnt/backup/redhat-6.2.partimg.gz
partimage -z2 -o save /dev/hda9 /mnt/backup/win95-osr2.partimg.bz2
partimage -e restore /dev/hda13 /mnt/backup/suse-6.4.partimg
partimage restmbr /mnt/backup/debian-potato-2.2.partimg.bz2
partimage imginfo /mnt/backup/debian-potato-2.2.partimg.bz2

OPTIONS

-z val --compress val
       Set  image  file compression level.  val=0: don't compress: very
       fast but very big image file val=1: compress  using  gzip:  fast
       and small image file (default) val=2: compress using bzip2: very
       slow and very small image file

-o --overwrite
       Overwrite the existing image file without confirmation.

-d --nodesc
       Don't ask any description for the image file.

-V vol --volume vol
       Split image into multiple volumes files. vol will be the size in
       KB of volumes
-w --waitvol
       Wait for a confirmation after each volume change.

-e --erase
       Erase empty blocks on restore with zero bytes.

-M --nombr
       Don't create a backup of the MBR (Mast Boot Record) in the image
       file.

-f action --finish action
       Action to do if finished successfully action=0      wait:  don't
       make   anything  action=1      halt  (power  off)  the  computer
       action=2     reboot (restart the computer): action=3     quit

-b --batch
       batch mode: the GUI won't wait for an user action.

DIAGNOSTICS You can read options set at compile time running 'partimage -i'.

System Installation Suite

http://www.sisuite.org/

System Installation Suite is a collection of open source software projects designed to work together to automate the installation and configuration of networked workstations. These software projects fit around a modular design framework designed to be cross-platform, operating system independant, and scalable from a single workstation to a thousand node collection of workstations. For more information please read the SIS Application Stack page.

NB,

It seems to be very powerful. There are many articles about it. It can even backup Linux clusters.
As of 2003.10.03, its news web page was last updated in 2002.

Copying Linux disk image

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.questions
Date: 2003-06-08 19:40:41 PST

> > I do have a copy of 'Drive Image 4.0' from PowerQuest which claims that it
> > copies Linux partitions but the documentation doesn't lend any more hints
> > than that simple statement.  I *might* be able to convince the
> > powers-that-be to purchase an updated version or some other tool if there
> > wasn't any other straightforward way to accomplish what I am looking to do.
>
>Norton Ghost will supposedly work with Linux drive images as well.
>
>The Linux equivelant might be to just install a second drive, preferrably
>on a second IDE channel, and do something like this:
>
> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=4k
>
>I've no experience using this, but it seems the correct way to go.  Of
>course, if you don't want to install any hardware into the box, the
>PowerQuest or Norton options might be better.
>
>Scott

I have used Norton Ghost on my linux machine. I have Ghosted it to an image on a Windows 98 PC on my network, and have also restored it from the Ghost image. I always Ghost an image of an installation once I get it working just right. I then put the Ghost images on CD Rom for safe keeping. With the images on CD rom, I can restore a hard disk from the computers CD drive after booting with the Ghost boot disk. It works really well and I would recommend it. There are other programs that also do this, but I am so satisfied with what I bought that I haven't tried the others.

hudson smith

Copying Linux disk image

Check the product at http://www.sisuite.org.

Free Software Foundation (FSF) Associate Member 499

Linux is easy to maintain

I see A linux "Ghost" type app is available :

http://www.partimage.org/

Partition Image is a Linux/UNIX utility similar to Symantec's Ghost. This uility saves partitions in the EXT2, Reiserfs, NTFS, HPFS, FAT16, and FAT32 file system formats to an image file. The image file can be compressed with gzip or bzip2 in order to save disk space, and it can be split in order to fit onto a series of floppy disks. This program can be useful for backup purposes. A boot/root disk is also provided, allowing you to run Partition Image without Linux installed on the hard disk.

Terry

Linux is easy to maintain

From the included BOOT-ROOT-creation.txt:

How to create a boot disk:
1. compile a recent kernel with many harware support, and many file systems (as ext2, fat, reiser, ntfs) with make bzImage (do not use DMA by default)
2. use rdev on the image: rdev bzImage /dev/fd0 rdev -r bzImage 49152 (49152 = ask disk, and read from 0) rdev -R bzImage 0 (to make the root RW and allow to login)
3. dd if=bzImage of=/dev/fd0
How to create a root disk:
1. dd if=/dev/zero of=image count=3733 bs=1k
2. mkfs.minix image
3. mount -o loop -t minix image /mnt/image
4. remove debug data from binaries executables libraries and programs to save space: program:……………objcopy —strip-all program shared library:……..objcopy —stripdebug library.so
5. copy all files to /mnt/image
6. umount /mnt/image
7. cat image | gzip -9 > image.gz
8. dd if=image.gz of=/dev/fd0

clone a linux: Ghost yes, Disk Image Pro No

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.help
Date: 2001-07-18 09:47:06 PST

> Has anyone used Ghost or Disk Image Pro to clone the hard disk on a linux
> system?

Tried both products recently and Disk Image Pro is currently unable to copy Linux Swap - it bombs out with a program error - this is acknowledged on their website and they are intending a fix for it at some point….

However, used Norton Ghost and this worked absolutely fine for our Linux Mandrake 7.0 machine.

One thing we did notice is too make sure your disk-size is being picked up correctly in the BIOS , otherwise ghost won't get the partitions sizes right (understandably) - for instance it made a 2G disk look like a 3G disk.

Also - if this is a system disk, there is an option I think you need to check under the OPTIONS menu in Ghost, which tells it this I believe.

John