Topic: Migrating SME

[Derek]

Hello,

I'm a bit stumped. I'm trying to migrate an SME 5.1.2 server to a new box. (Bigger drives, faster processor). I don't have a tape drive, and there is too much data on the server to do a backup to desktop. Currently, data is backed up over the network to a Samba file server. I've tried Gost and PQDI, (followed by an upgrade to 5.5 to detect new hardware), but expanding the partitions to fit during the ghost process breaks the software mirror. (On both drives). It works if I leave the partitions the same size, but that defeats the purpose of migrating to bigger drives.

As far as I can tell, these are my two options...
1. Do a fresh install on the new box, re-install all contribs, recreate all users, ibays, etc...then copy data from backup. (Nightmare)
2. Buy a tape drive

Anybody have any other solutions?

Thanks,

Derek

[Bob Todd]

not sure what a tape drive would solve for you - you could achieve much of the same simply by taking the drive out the old server and mounting them in the new server and copying the data across. To be honest if I was in your position and I was performing such an upgrade ie to new hardware and new version of SME I'd be tempted to start with a completely fresh build anyway - running it side by side with the old server until I was happy I had everything setup and working, then import the data. Just my opinion.

[Tyrone Miles]

I think that there is a how-to somewhere out here that shouws you how to configure your desktop backup function to allow you to back up using samba to a share on another computer.

Doing it that way allows you to go over the 3 GB limit of the standard desktop backup. I would search the how-to's or the fourm. But I am positive it was out there a while ago.

[Derek]

I may be mistaken, but I don't believe a restore from a backup to desktop of over 2 GB is possible. (Even if the file is created succesfully on a remote share). Doesn't the restore function create a temp file that must obey the Ext2 2GB file size limit? Can someone correct or enlighten me on this?

With a compatible tape drive, I could backup to tape, (without worrying about backup file size limits), and along with a re-installation disk, re-install my server on another machine and restore from tape - everything but contribs would be restored. Is this correct?

Just saw this post on the devinfo list about unison:

http://www.ifost.org.au/Software/
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Looks like another alternative. I should look into rsync as well.

Thanks,

Derek

[Tyrone Miles]

This is the how-to I was talking about. It was writtien for version 4 I don't see why it would not work for 5 I would write the person who made the how to and see if it will.

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/contrib/flexbackup-to-disk-howto.htm

[Derek]

This sounds promising. Thanks Tyrone!

[Des Dougan]

It does work on 5 (tested up to 5.1.2) - and I believe I updated it to say that .

Des Dougan

[Marco]

Use Rsync.

Exclude the following:

/lost+found
/mnt
/proc
/tmp
/var/tmp
/var/lock
/var/run
/var/spool/squid/
core

#!/bin/bash
# DO NOT MESS UP THIS SCRIPT
# (c) MSN 2002

SOURCE=/

# BUDIR location on other machine
# One could also mount it in your local machine
BUDIR="e-smith::backup/"
OPTIONS="-Rarpzv --delete --delete-after --force --stats"
EXCLUDE=--exclude-from=/etc/rsync-backup/exclude.default

# Final backup command

echo rsync $OPTIONS $EXCLUDE $SOURCE $BUDIR
rsync $OPTIONS $EXCLUDE $SOURCE $BUDIR

#done

[Benny Andersen]

Hi

I have just done the same thing this week and found the same issue. I believe that anything over 2 gig is in the too hard basket for desktop backup (which was the normal backup for my server until now) what I did was looked for the largest ibays and the easiest to restore on the server and removed the contents, but left the ibays intact. (my son had 90 meg in his "not anymore") this reduced my desktop backup down to 90 meg.

I then installed the new version of SME onto my new improved machine and configured it accordingly. Once all was working I restored from desktop backup onto the new machine and everything worked. All I had to do was reconfigure a few minor things.

During this process my major concern was to get MYSQL databases onto the new machine intact as one is commercial and quite large I am now looking at new backup media and methods

[Tyrone Miles]

Honestly I back up my server to the desktop every night but everyweek I ghost my machine. Then if I crash I just use the ghost to restore it.  I have 2 GB on my server (if you include applications etc) and it takes 12 minutes to back it up to another machine on my network.

The cool thing is when I needed to make an offsite backup server for my network I ghosted my main server then installed the ghost on a similar machine, changed the host name, ip's and other small details then I had an identical copy of my server offsite! Works great. Then I installed unison and now I can make changes to my primary server and sync it with the offsite machine (just the ibays) and it's up to date. Then every other week I reghost the backup (incase SQL databases and home directory's get changed) because if my primary server goes down I redirect traffic to the off site one.