Need help using Partimage

[jacatone]

When I bootup the Partimage CD I see sda1 which is my Kubuntu 7.10 install and sda2 which is a separate partition I created for the backup image. I'm having trouble figuring out what to type for the placement command for the backup image. I've attached a jpeg of the Partimage screenshot from their site. Does anyone have any experience with this program, and could advise me? Thanks.

[stealthbanana]

Re: Need help using Partimage

OK.

Your running from a love cd. You will have to create a directory for the partition you will back up to and then mount it by hand. I have told you how to do this before.

Assuming you mounted the disk as sda2 your backup location, what I assume is the placement command will be

/mnt/sda3/whateverfilenameyouwant

you do not need to put the .gz at the end, as partimage does not always use gzip (bzip2 or none is an option and linux does care much what code you have after a dot in a filename)

When you restore, you will have to mount the partition which holds the backup image. The partition to be backed up / restored should not be mounted.

[jacatone]

Re: Need help using Partimage

I tried this and it's just not working. When I'm in the SystemRescueCD, I only have an Xterm terminal which shows "root@sysresccd /root%". What commands do I then need to mount my sda2 parition?

[stealthbanana]

Re: Need help using Partimage

OK. First thing to remember, in Linux, everything is a file, so we have to make a directory to stick the mounted filesystem, sda2 in your case. This we shall do under in the /mnt directory as its handy, but you can actually stick it anywhere.

In the shell

mkdir /mnt/sda2

now to mount the partition with the mount command

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2

Hey persto, one mounted partition. Now its always handy to do a test to make sure so...

cd /mnt/sda2
ls

and make sure its what you expect to see on the partition, if it's actually empty try

df -h

to check the size

[jacatone]

Re: Need help using Partimage

If after I try "df -h" and find it's not empty, how would I clear it out? I'm asking because in my many attempts to run this it did seem to write for a while then say "disk is full, choose another disk". Thanks.

[stealthbanana]

Re: Need help using Partimage

The easiest way would be to run midnight commander from the menu in the sysresccd.

Navigate to the mounted partition and delete the files.

or you could cd via the shell and use the rm command with a wildcard, but try not to get into that habit as its very dangerous if you are not in the correct directory.

[jacatone]

Re: Need help using Partimage

When I type in "mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2" I get "can't read superblock". Whatever that mean.

[stealthbanana]

Re: Need help using Partimage

I am assuming it was sda2, that was a big assumption.

The easiest way would be to run gpart and look at the layout of the disc and take note of where the backup is to go.

bad superblock could mean that it can't be found, or the fs is corrupt

before you run fsck on the partition ensure that it is the actual backup partition. Also even if it is empty, there will still be some disk usage showing due to overheads from the journal.