Restoring from tar with changed partitions

[stairway27]

Thanks in advance for anything you might be able to contribute.

Short version: If I want to do a full restore from tar backups, but my partitions for root, boot, and swap change, what all do I need to edit, besides /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf, to get everything working, including swap and hibernate?

Longer story:
I have a new Dell XPS M1330 that I've been working on configuring for about a week. Sparing the details of attempting to retain most of the Dell stuff, I decided to try backing up my satisfactory and stable Fedora 8 install before wiping the drive and starting over. Using System Rescue CD, I mounted my /, /boot, and /home partitions and create tar files from them.

In my new partition scheme, there is no /boot (I needed one more partition for other purposes, so I had to sacrifice this one.) So, basically, the whole partition scheme is changed. I figured I was clever enough to find all the details and get my system working as it was before. Um… I found I'm not that clever.

My new scheme is:

/dev/sda6 = /
/dev/sda7 = swap
/dev/sda8 = /home
(no boot)

I did a fresh install of Fedora 8 to these partitions. Then I rebooted into System Rescue CD, and..
* mounted /dev/sda8 as /f8 & restored the home.tar into - No issues here.
* mounted /dev/sda6 as /f8 & restored root.tar into it.
* backed up the new /boot to my usb drive
* restored boot.tar into /f8/boot. Files looked good
* modified /f8/boot/grub/grub.conf to look for images in /boot
* modified /etc/fstab: removed the entry for /boot, and figured the labels would work for all else

On my initial reboot, GRUB gave me a GEOM Error. So, I used System Rescue CD to mount and edit grub.conf again, replacing the labels for / with /dev/sda5. Rebooting yield more errors, so I replaced the labels in /etc/fstab with /dev entries. I also ran grub with the following sequence of commands:
# grub
grub> root (hd0,5)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

After this, I was able to boot, but noticed that swap didn’t work, because it was complaining about the volume label.

How do I change the configuration so swap will find the right partition? Is there anything else I need to edit besides fstab and grub.conf? And why the heck didn't the partition labels work for / and swap?

Thanks all,

</CR>
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Running Fedora 8 on Dell XPS M1330
Check the Blog, If You Dare

[clay247]

I think you messed up when you tar -xf root.tar over /

Does that work guys?

/sbin/fdisk -l

should tell you were swap is, and then edit /etc/fstab

[stairway27]

Originally Posted by clay247

I think you messed up when you tar -xf root.tar over /

Does that work guys?

/sbin/fdisk -l

should tell you were swap is, and then edit /etc/fstab

Everything restored from tar exactly the way I expected it to, including into /. How would this have "messed up"?

I did edit /etc/fstab with the new swap partition. One thing I'm concerned about is the hibernate configuration, since it uses swap, and my swap space is working, but I had to change fstab to use the raw device (/dev/sda7) instead of a label. Where's the config for hibernation stored?

Thank you!

[clay247]

When you made the tar of / did you exclude /dev /proc whatever, I have never done things this way, just wondering.

[stairway27]

I booted from a LiveCD and did this:

# mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/ext
# cd /mnt/ext
# tar zcvf /mnt/usb/root.tar.gz *

I did not exclude /dev or /proc or anything else. Since the filesystem was "offline" (not being used as the actual root fs) I assumed the full backup would be ok. Not true? Interesting idea...

[dshaw256]

I think you are ok, stairway27. I did the same thing a couple of months ago ... I had to replace a bad drive and I ended up changing my partitions on the new one. I had to change fstab, I had to use the raw device rather than the label, and I had to change the grub configuration.

I also had to change the "splashimage" line in grub.conf to point to the correct device to get the pretty pictures back.

Since you only had the one filesystem mounted, your backup is probably fine. In any case, I don't believe you can write to /proc, even if it was backed up somehow. But if you were to do it with everyhing mounted, you'd have to do something like:

tar cvpPzf /mnt/usb/root.tar.gz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt

...to get rid of the unwanted stuff.

[GrapeShot]

If you want to get your labels back (such as BOOT for your / parttition), you will need to use the e2label command

e2label device [newlabel]

[lmo]

The initrd does need to be fixed for all references to partitions that changed.

There is a way do do that without mkinitrd, using a technique similar to this post:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...6&postcount=11

Or use mkinitrd.