FC3 full backup and restore options

[Jeff Vian]

On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 15:25 -0400, Mike Pepe wrote:
> Hi listers,
> 
> I'm converting my FC3 box from software to hardware RAID and changing 
> out some dead disks.
> 
> I don't want to reinstall. Here's what I was thinking of doing- if 
> anyone has any comments or suggetions ("yes that works","I tried that 
> and it didn't work", etc) I'd love to hear them.
> 
> 1: Boot off rescue CD
> 2: change into the /mnt/sysimage directory to get to my root filesystem
> 3: tar the contents onto a physical tape and/or external USB disk
> 4: shut down, install hardware RAID card, power up, format RAID arrays
> 5: boot off rescue CD again, partition the RAID disks and create new 
> filesystems, mount new structure under /mnt/sysimage
> 6: untar backup into new directory structure
> 7: boot off GRUB floppy, reinstall GRUB
> 8: hope machine boots after all this
> 
> Comments anyone?

This looks like it should work to me, with one caveat.
The drivers for your new raid array would likely not be active in the
old images.

I would suggest doing a minimal install with step 5 to create the arrays
and install the proper kernel and initrd image as well as getting grub
installed properly. (This will make sure the booted kernel has the
proper drivers.)  Then make sure the contents of /boot in the new
install as well as the related fstab are saved.
After doing the untar in step 6, you would then likely need to restore
the image you saved of the minimal install for /boot and fstab.

If both these are done step 7 may not be needed. 

>