Linux free Backup and Clone (imaging) Solution

Mondo Rescue is an open source, free disaster recovery and backup utility that allows you to easily create complete system (Linux or Windows) Clone/Backup ISO Images to CD, DVD,Tape, USB devices, Hard Disk, and NFS. And can be used to quickly restore or redeploy working image into other systems, in the event of data loss, you will be able to restore as much as entire system data from backup media.

Mondo program is available freely for download and released under GPL (GNU Public License) and has been tested on a large number of Linux distributions.

Installation of Mondo Rescue

Installing MondoRescue on RHEL / CentOS / Scientific Linux

The latest Mondo Rescue packages can be obtained from the “MondoRescue Repository“. Use “wget” command to download and add repository under your system. The Mondo repository will install suitable binary software packages such as afio, buffer, mindi, mindi-busybox, mondo and mondo-doc for your distribution, if they are available.

For RHEL/CentOS/SL 6,5,4 – 32-Bit

Download the MondoRescue repository under “/etc/yum.repos.d/” as file name “mondorescue.repo“. Please download correct repository for your Linux OS distribution version.

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 6 – 32-Bit ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/6/i386/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 5 – 32-Bit ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/5/i386/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 4 – 32-Bit ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/i386/mondorescue.repo

For RHEL/CentOS/SL 6,5,4 – 64-Bit

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 6 – 64-Bit ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/6/x86_64/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 5 – 64-Bit ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/5/x86_64/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 4 – 64-Bit ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/x86_64/mondorescue.repo

Once you successfully added repository, do “yum” to install latest Mondo tool.

# yum install mondo

Installing MondoRescue on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Debian user’s can do “wget” to grab the MondoRescue repository for Debain 6 and 5 distributions. Run the following command to add “mondorescue.sources.list” to “/etc/apt/sources.list” file to install Mondo packages.

On Debian

## On Debian 6 ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/debian/6/mondorescue.sources.list

# sh -c “cat mondorescue.sources.list >> /etc/apt/sources.list”

# apt-get update

# apt-get install mondo

## On Debian 5 ##

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/debian/5/mondorescue.sources.list

# sh -c “cat mondorescue.sources.list >> /etc/apt/sources.list”

# apt-get update

# apt-get install mondo

On Ubuntu/Linux Mint

To install Mondo Rescue in Ubuntu 12.10, 12.04, 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04 or Linux Mint 13, open the terminal and add the MondoRescue repository in “/etc/apt/sources.list” file. Run these following commands to install Mondo Resuce packages.

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/ubuntu/`lsb_release -r|awk ‘{print $2}’`/mondorescue.sources.list

# sh -c “cat mondorescue.sources.list >> /etc/apt/sources.list”

# apt-get update

# apt-get install mondo

Creating Cloning or Backup ISO Image of System/Server

There are two ways to create a Backup/Clone ISO. Interactive and command line.

Interactive Bacup/Clone ISO Image

After installing Mondo, Run “mondoarchive” command as “root” user. Then follow screenshots that shows how to create an ISO based backup media of your full system.

If you’ve selected default backup path, you will see an ISO image under “/var/cache/mondo/“, that you can burnt into a CD/DVD for later restore.

Command Line Bacup/Clone ISO Image

To create a one line full backup ISO with name “mybackup”v run:

mondoarchive -O -p mybackup -i -d /var/cache/mondo -s 4480m

this will create a file named “mybackup-1.iso” at the path “/var/cache/mondo”

Shedule a daily backup (CRON JOB)

1. Use ‘at’ to run your usual mondoarchive command

# at now + 5 min

#  mondoarchive -O -p mybackup -i -d /var/cache/mondo -s 4480m

# <CTRL>-d

2. Grab the script generated by ‘at’ and make a copy of it

grep mondo /var/spool/at/* 
cp /var/spool/at/<file-from-grep> /root/mondo-cronscript

3. Edit that script to use ‘<your mondoarchive command>’

# vi /root/mondo-cronscript

4. at the end of the script add a new line with the mondoarchive command:

mondoarchive -O -p mybackup -i -d /var/cache/mondo -s 4480m

5. Run that script from your crontab (the egample is a "working" daily task, monday to friday at 00:00)

# crontab -e

0 0 * * 1-5 /root/mondo-cronscript

Restore

To restore burn the ISO to a DVD (or mount it if using virtualization) and start the server. At the prompt write “nuke” and it will restore the whole disk (re-image).

If restoring to different machine/VM it will have different MAC address. It need to change the MAC address of the eth0 interface to the new one in order the interface to be enabled.

MAC address change after restore

ifconfig -a (check the MAC address)

vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 (edit the MAC address adding the new one)

service network stop

service network start

ifconfig -a (check it eth0 is up)

if not then try “ifup eth0”