Cyconet Blog » Linux

[selfnote] Cloning/Backing up NTFS systems

cyco — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:27:34 +0000

For some reasons, you may need to clone/backup NTFS based systems. Lets say your NTFS system is located at /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 is a spare partition where you can store your image.

At first you need to boot a live system to take an image:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
dd bs=512 count=1 if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/xp_vbox.mbr
ntfsclone -s -o – /dev/sda1 | bzip2 -9 -c > \
/mnt/sdb1/xp_vbox.img.bz2

To restore the image you just need:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
dd count=1 bs=446 if=/mnt/sdb1/xp_vbox.mbr of=/dev/sda
cat /mnt/sdb1/xp_vbox.img.bz2 | bunzip2 -c | \
ntfsclone -r -O /dev/sda1 -

P.S. If you are elective in germany, have a look at this!

Oh happy day …

cyco — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:01:20 +0000

What a happy day … on the wedding anniversary of our civil marriage we got a great gift. Our favorite distribution released a new major version.
Like every time … it’s the best distribution our project released so far. Many thanks to all those people who did make that happen. If you not married today, maybe you have the possibility to dedicate Lenny to your valentine. :)

Booting Linux on Cisco 7513

Administrator — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:15:57 +0000

Today I was reconfiguring a Cisco 7513 with a RSP 16 and a FastEthernet module inside.
So I did a “erase nvram” and a “reload”. After booting I was surprised to see the following in my Terminal:

Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]:
Loading pxelinux.0 from 10.42.10.50 (via FastEthernet4/0/0): !!!
[OK - 13156 bytes]

So the box took an IP via DHCP and tried to netboot. (Un)fortunately it only breaks my terminal, so no worries! ;)

Pimp my T5725

cyco — Sat, 19 May 2007 17:18:16 +0000

Yesterday my ordered HP Thin Client T5725 arrived. The clue is, Debian sarge is and no moving parts (no noise) are inside. It’s a really nice thin client and it can be used as Surfstation out of the box. There is also a “HP Connection Administrator” which can manage ‘Citrix‘, ‘rdesktop‘ and ‘XDMCP‘ connections.
After taking a short overview, I decided to update to etch. This was a kind tricky, cause packages did need to update in correct order to save the HP packages. Due the switch from Xfree to xorg with etch, the graphical frontend for configuring the X server didn’t work anymore, but in my environment this is no issue.
So now I’m really happy with a HP Thin Client and bleeding edge software on it, for xdmcp use. ;)

Taking Xen guests (domU) alive via routed network

cyco — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:02:46 +0000

The xend config looks like this:

playground:~# grep -v ^# /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp
(network-script ‘network-bridge netdev=dummy0′)
(vif-script vif-bridge)
(dom0-min-mem 196)
(dom0-cpus 0)

Creating volume group for Xen domU (/dev/hdb2 was allready created with id 8e):

playground:~# pvcreate /dev/hdb2
Physical volume “/dev/hdb2″ successfully created
playground:~# vgcreate xen-vol /dev/hdb2
Volume group “xen-vol” successfully created
playground:~# vgscan
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while…
Found volume group “xen-vol” using metadata type lvm2

Creating first domU:

playground:~# xen-create-image –ip 192.168.222.50 –hostname xetch.blubb.cyconet.org
General Infomation
——————–
Hostname : xetch.blubb.cyconet.org
Distribution : etch
Fileystem Type : ext3
Size Information
—————-
Image size : 4Gb
Swap size : 1024Mb
Image type : full
Memory size : 128Mb
Kernel path : /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-xen-vserver-686
Initrd path : /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-4-xen-vserver-686
Networking Information
———————-
IP Address 1 : 192.168.222.50
Netmask : 255.255.255.0
Gateway : 192.168.222.1
Creating ext3 filesystem on /dev/xen-vol/xetch.blubb.cyconet.org-disk
Done
Installing your system with debootstrap mirror ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/
Done
Running hooks
Done
No role script specified. Skipping
Creating Xen configuration file
Done
Setting up root password
Enter new UNIX password:
etype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
All done
Logfile produced at:
/var/log/xen-tools/xetch.blubb.cyconet.org.log

Add the following to /etc/network/interfaces:

auto dummy0
iface dummy0 inet static
address 192.168.222.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.222.0
broadcast 192.168.222.255

Bringing up network interface, restarting xen and starting the domU:

playground:~# ifup dummy0
playground:~# /etc/init.d/xendomains stop
playground:~# /etc/init.d/xend restart
playground:~# /etc/init.d/xendomains start
playground:~# xm create xetch.blubb.cyconet.org.cfg -c
Using config file “/etc/xen/xetch.blubb.cyconet.org.cfg”.
…

If you want to autostart your domUs, you have to symlink the configfile to /etc/xen/auto:

playground:~# mkdir /etc/xen/auto/
playground:~# ln -s /etc/xen/xetch.blubb.cyconet.org.cfg /etc/xen/auto/xetch.blubb.cyconet.org.cfg

Getting started with XEN on etch

cyco — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:32:10 +0000

Today I thought it’s time to look deeper into the Xen hype. So I decided to install xen on etch. I followed Ganneffs recommandation

playground:~# aptitude install bridge-utils iproute \
xen-ioemu-3.0.3-1 xen-utils-3.0.3-1\
xen-linux-system-2.6.18-4-xen-vserver-686 libc6-xen

Booting the dom0 leeds me into kernel panic, cause no root device was found. Hmm … there seems to be the driver missing. Right – there wasn’t any /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-4-xen-vserver-686.
Waldi did hint me to /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-2.6.18-4-xen-vserver-686.postinst and I got my ramdisk this way:

playground:~# update-initramfs -c -t -k \
2.6.18-4-xen-vserver-686
playground:~# command -v update-grub > \
/dev/null && update-grub

After booting dom0 successfully, my serial console disappeared. After some digging around, I got the clue I need to tell xen, that there is one.
I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst:

# xenhopt=com1=115200,8n1 console=com1
..
# xenkopt=console=vga

Dom0 is running now, lets see what we can do next, maybe:

playground:~# aptitude install xen-tools

Serial console with VMWare

cyco — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:26:20 +0000

In your config file of virtual machine you need the following:

# grep serial openwrt.vmx
serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.fileType = "pipe"
serial0.fileName = "./serial1"
serial0.pipe.endPoint = "server"
serial0.hardwareFlowControl = "TRUE"

Redirect output to stdio or a port:

# socat /serial1 >

Remove (obliterate) trees from subversion repository

cyco — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:22:39 +0000

If you need to wipe all traces for some objects in your svn repository, you can do something like this:

# svnadmin dump REPOS_PATH | svndumpfilter \
$string | \
svnadmin load REPOS_PATH_NEW
# mv REPOS_PATH REPOS_PATH_backup && REPOS_PATH_NEW \
REPOS_PATH

Backup and restore a Windows partition

cyco — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:48:51 +0000

Today I discovered ‘ntfsclone’ which is included in debian in the ‘ntfsprogs’ package.

For example if you wonna try to backup your ‘/dev/hda3′ to a remote host:

foobar:~ # ntfsclone –save-image –output – /edv/hda3 | \
ssh $remotehost ‘( cat > xp.img )’

remotehost:~ # cat xp.img | ssh $foobar \
‘(ntfsclone –restore-image –overwrite /dev/hda3 – )’

Maybe you you also will have a look into ‘ntfsresize’! ;-)

LVM and Quota with Vserver on Debian

cyco — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:34:49 +0000

This article is based on the excellent article on 5dollarwhitebox.org.

At first install nessesary packages:

# aptitude -t sarge-backports install lvm2\
util-vserver coreutils linux-image-2.6-vserver-686

Create Volume and Group:

Replace ‘/dev/hda3′ to your own needs!

# pvcreate /dev/hda3
Physical volume “/dev/hda3″ successfully created
# vgcreate vg0 /dev/hda3
Volume group “vg0″ successfully created

Create a Logical Volume

# lvcreate -L2048 -n vserver1 vg0
Logical volume “vserver1″ created

Create and mount Filesystem, installing base system into vserver and stopping it:

# mkfs -t ext3 -j /dev/vg0/vserver1
# mkdir /var/lib/vservers/vserver1
# mount -t ext3 /dev/vg0/vserver1 /var/lib/vservers/vserver1
# vserver vserver1 build -n vserver1 \
–hostname vserver1.vs.domain.net \
–interface eth0:10.0.0.1/32 -m debootstrap — -d sarge \
-m ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian
# vserver vserver1 stop
# umount /var/lib/vservers/vserver1

Vroot operations and attaching vroot to LVM partition (and detaching again)

‘/dev/vroot3′ is used, cause we use ‘/dev/hda3′ in our example. Please adjust it!

# e2fsck -p /dev/vg0/vserver1
# mount /dev/vg0/vserver1 /var/lib/vservers/vserver1
# rm -f /var/lib/vservers/vserver1/dev/hdv1
# vrsetup /dev/vroot3 /dev/vg0/vserver1 # vroot3 cause /dev/hda3
# cp -fa /dev/vroot3 /var/lib/vservers/vserver1/dev/hdv1
# mount -o remount,ro /dev/vg0/vserver1
# umount /dev/vg0/vserver1
# vrsetup -d /dev/vroot3

Enable Quota Capabilities:

# echo “quota_ctl” >> /etc/vservers/vserver1/ccapabilites

Starting Vserver:

# e2fsck -p /dev/vg0/vserver1
# mount /dev/vg0/vserver1 /var/lib/vservers/vserver1
# rm -f /var/lib/vservers/vserver1/dev/hdv1
# vrsetup /dev/vroot3 /dev/vg0/vserver1
# cp -fa /dev/vroot3 /var/lib/vservers/vserver1/dev/hdv1
# vserver vserver1 start

Make it start and stopping automaticaly:

# vserver vserver1 stop
# sed -i s/MARK=default/MARK=production/ /etc/default/util-vserver
# echo “production” > /etc/vservers/vserver1/apps/init/mark
# sed -i s/AUTO=false/AUTO=true/ /etc/default/util-vserver
# wget -O /usr/local/sbin/vserver-mount-fs \
ftp://ftp.cyconet.org/pub/debian/scripts/vserver-mount-fs
# wget -O /usr/local/sbin/mount-lvm-vservers \
ftp://ftp.cyconet.org/pub/debian/scripts/mount-lvm-vservers
# chmod 700 /usr/local/sbin/mount-lvm-vservers
# chmod 700 /usr/local/sbin/vserver-mount-fs
# echo “/dev/vg0″ > /etc/vservers/vserver1/apps/init/lv_exists
# update-rc.d mount-lvm-vservers defaults 20 21

That should be all to make it work! :-)