[ale] HELP! Mint machine is booting from the wrong hard drive

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi JD,

I appreciate you, Jim, and Phil clarifying these issues for me.  I may, in fact, have to alter my backup strategy.  I can see the advantages that you mention for versioned backups.  On most machines, I have my data being backed up to Amazon S3 via Jungledisk every 6 hours.  That has some limited versioning capability and individual backups are incremental.

There is one compelling reason (for me) that I've always favored image backups despite the limitations you mention.  The absolute most important thing I want from a local backup, other than it being there when I need it, is for it to get me back up and running as quickly as possible after a crash.

I do hundreds of things to a pc during installation / reinstallation.  I configure the bios, OS, updates, patches, software sources, wifi, power settings, security, user accounts, icons, backgrounds, firefox, 6 or more firefox plugins, autorun / preview, dns, flash, swap, disk diagnostics, backup, fonts, themes, gnome panels, printers, java, libre office, pdf reader, online backup, user applications, user icons, remote control / assistance, email, synchronizing bookmarks, evernote, dropbox, ntp, etc.  I touch the options menu in most every major subsystem, application, and plugin.

For a Linux machine, it may take me 1 - 2 days to get it the way I want it.  For a Windows machine, it may take me 4 days.  That's partly because I may have more user accounts on a Windows machine, more varied applications, remote assistance, user interaction and training, and because Windows likes to reboot more than Linux does when you change anything.  Also, on a machine of another user such as a family member, I have a user account for me, one for them with admin rights, and one for them as a regular user.  All the application settings must be replicated on each account.

In any case, the very last thing I want to do when my machine or one of a family member crashes, if I have a choice, is to end up doing all those hundreds of things again.  With an image backup, I boot the backup software, restore the image, and I'm back up and running in a few hours.  With a clone backup, I put the backup hard drive in, and I'm back up and running in 15 minutes.  Then I replace the failed hdd and clone the clone so I have a backup again.

I'm certainly willing to consider alternative backup strategies, and I can see the advantages you mentioned.  But, if I cannot do a full system restoration in under 6 hours, with all the tweaks intact, it probably won't work for me.  I would guess that it's harder to store all the OS and app settings in Windows than it is in Linux.

Sincerely,

Ron



JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

>Ron,
>
>I stopped using image-based backups about 15 yrs ago for UNIX systems. 
>I would
>be curious if anyone here still uses them?  Even old style dump/restore
>doesn't
>do that.
>
>There are thousands of different backup methods possible, each with
>different
>issues. You've discovered 1 of the smaller issues with image-based
>backups going
>to disks on the same machine.
>
>If you use versioned backups like duplicity, rdiff-backup and many
>others
>support, you'll have different issues, but much more flexibility. 
>There are
>GUIs for most of these.  I can restore everything from yesterday, last
>week,
>last month and for some systems, the month before that.  30 says of
>versioned
>backups doesn't require 30x the storage.  Let me see ...
>$ sudo rdiff-backup --list-increment-sizes /Backups/desktop
>        Time                       Size        Cumulative size
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Wed Jul  3 02:03:06 2013         4.66 GB           4.66 GB   (current
>mirror)
>Tue Jul  2 02:03:07 2013         9.13 MB           4.67 GB
>Mon Jul  1 02:03:07 2013         9.64 MB           4.67 GB
>Sun Jun 30 02:03:06 2013         24.5 MB           4.70 GB
>....
>Fri Jun  7 02:03:06 2013         9.55 MB           4.94 GB
>Thu Jun  6 02:03:07 2013         19.1 MB           4.95 GB
>Wed Jun  5 02:03:06 2013         8.56 MB           4.96 GB
>Tue Jun  4 02:03:05 2013         9.08 MB           4.97 GB
>
>I haven't done much on my desktop the last month, so there really isn't
>much
>change data ... just daily emails and a few scripts.  4.66G (mirror) vs
>4.97G
>(all changes for the last 30 days).  Might need to up the retention to
>60 days.
>
>This backup is just the information to restore the desktop. All OS
>settings
>(/etc, crontabs, selected /var/ things ), package lists (apt, cpan,
>gems),
>hardware list, plus my $HOME.  I do NOT backup the OS itself.
>
>Currently, there are 32 systems here with backups of a similar style. 
>Total
>storage for these systems is: 421GB. Most were migrated from Xen to KVM
>using
>this method in the last 2 yrs.  If I stored the entire OS for each,
>that would
>be roughly 32 x 4G = 128G ... extra for very little added convenience,
>IMHO.
>Plus I'd have to manage that extra storage, check it as part of the
>backups,
>move it around, ... just more hassles.  Pushing more data to a remote
>location
>is a killer too.
>
>Before I switched methods, backups were taking many, many hours. Now
>each system
>backup is usually just 2-3 minutes.
>
>Large data that doesn't change much is backed up differently -
>basically using
>rsync without any versioning. It just isn't practical to have 30
>versions of a
>25G file.
>
>
>
>On 07/03/2013 07:30 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
>> You want a data clone but not a clone of the hard drive meta data -
>UUID in
>> particular. Change the backup drive UUID (for each partition) and
>change the
>> backup method to only capture files - rsync is a good choice. Lastly,
>check the
>> backed-up fstab file and make sure the UUIDs there point to the
>backup drive. Be
>> sure to exclude that file from being overwritten later
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 1:07 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
>> <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com
><mailto:atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com>>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>     see below
>> 
>>     Phil Turmel <philip at turmel.org <mailto:philip at turmel.org>> wrote:
>> 
>>     >On 07/02/2013 11:15 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>     >> Hi all,
>>     >>
>>     >> One of my machines is running Mint 13 (based on Ubuntu 12.04).
> The
>>     >> machine has two hard drives, a 320 GB hard drive on /dev/sda
>and a
>>     >500
>>     >> GB hard drive on /dev/sdb.  The 500 GB drive is for backup
>purposes
>>     >> only.  Tonight, I made an exact clone (as far as I know) of
>the 320
>>     >GB
>>     >> hdd over to the 500 GB hdd with clonezilla.  The 500 GB hdd is
>still
>>     >> attached.
>>     >
>>     >The problem is that you made an *exact* clone.  Modern distros
>use the
>>     >UUID or LABEL embedded in a filesystem to find the necessary
>partitions
>>     >during boot (to avoid issues with hot-pluggable drives).  If you
>clone
>>     >partitions, both will have that metadata, and your boot process
>becomes
>>     >random.
>>     >
>>     >> My bios is set to boot from the 320 GB drive (/dev/sda).  Once
>I
>>     >boot,
>>     >> the grub menu asks if I want to boot Mint on /dev/sda2, which
>is
>>     >> correct.  I select that, but, when the system comes up, I find
>that
>>     >the
>>     >> 500 GB hdd (/dev/sdB2) is the one that's mounted, and that's
>not what
>>     >I
>>     >> want.
>>     >>
>>     >> Can someone tell me why this is happening and how to prevent
>it
>>     >without
>>     >> physically unplugging the drive?
>>     >
>>     >Change the label and uuid on the partition(s) on one of the
>drives,
>>     >then
>>     >change /etc/fstab within that one to point to its own
>label/uuid.  The
>>     >utilities needed vary with filesystem type, but it would be
>"tune2fs"
>>     >for anything in the "ext" family.
>>     >
>>     >Use a rescue CD or thumb drive so you have total control over
>temporary
>>     >mounts.  Check your work with "blkid".
>>     >
>>     >Phil
>>     >
>> 
>>     Hi Phil,
>> 
>>     Thanks for the info.  I understand what you're saying.  I have a
>few more
>>     questions.
>> 
>>     * Would I not want an exact clone if I had to put the backup
>drive into service?
>> 
>>     * Do you know if Windows is susceptible to this problem?  I've
>had a clone
>>     drive connected to Windows in the past and haven't noticed a
>problem.  To be
>>     honest, I don't know if I booted that way, but I was wondering if
>that's a
>>     problem in that environment.
>> 
>>     * I'd rather not have to tweak every backup that I make.  Is
>there some way
>>     to automate the changes?  Or, perhaps I should just put a switch
>on the sata
>>     power cable and switch the drive off when I don't want to be
>accessing the
>>     backup drive.
>> 
>>     Sincerely,
>> 
>>     Ron
>> 
>> 
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Ron Frazier
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