October 28th, 2009
partimage is a tool for creating images of whole partitions. It supports all major file systems, like ext2/ext3. It will only backup the used blocks of a partition and thus save space. In order to do so, it needs to detect the type of the file system. Encrypted file systems can not be used directly. You first have to open the device:
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdXX SOMENAME
After that you can use the new device /dev/mapper/SOMENAME. You have to specify this device directly on the command line, because it will not be auto detected by partimage in the ncurses mode. Another important option is -M, which will not backup the MBR. If you forget this parameter the whole thing will fail. In the end the command looks like that:
partimage -z1 -d -M save /dev/mapper/SOMENAME FILENAME.img.gz
Tags: encrypted, image, linux, luks, partimage
Posted in filesystems, linux | No Comments »
October 22nd, 2009
In exactly one week from now a new version of Ubuntu will be released. The new features can be found in the release notes.
Tags: karmic, Ubuntu
Posted in Ubuntu | No Comments »
October 19th, 2009
I’m currently setting up a new file server. My first plan was to use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. The system has four sata drives, that should be combined to a raid10. Actually I wanted to use two raid1 which are combined into a striped logical volume via LVM. The server has no cd/dvd drive. Therefor an installation via PXE is the way to go. The text installer is capable of creation md raids and LVM volumes. Though I didn’t find any possibility to create a striped volume, neither in the debian nor in the ubuntu installer.
The solution is the following:
1. create the md raids and the LVM volumes outside the installer, with some live system.(CD/DVD or USB)
2. start the PXE installer
3. in the partition editor choose “manual setup”(or something similar)
4. the system will detect the created volumes which can be further used
This is only possibile with the current stable Debian installer, not with the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installer. I don’t know if the situation change in a newer Ubuntu version. It probably did as they take the code from Debian. Whatever…so my server will be a Debian system.
Tags: Debian, installation, linux, LVM, mdadm, raid10, Ubuntu
Posted in Debian, Ubuntu, linux | No Comments »