mondoarchive(1)

NAME

mondoarchive - a backup / disaster-recovery tool.

SYNOPSIS

mondoarchive -O [ options ] : backup your PC
mondoarchive -V [ options ] : verify your backup

DESCRIPTION

mondoarchive backs up a subset of your files, your entire filesystem, or even images of non-Linux filesystems to CD's, tape, ISO images or an NFS mount. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore everything, taking a PC from bare metal to its original state if necessary.

With -O, it backs up your filesystem to CD, tape, ISO images or NFS share. Boot floppies or a special boot CD will be created to allow you to restore from bare metal if necessary.

With -V, it verifies the backup against the live filesystem. This option may be used in combination with -O to verify a backup after its creation, or on its own to see how much the live filesystem has changed since the backup was made.

Data is restored by mondorestore while running on a Linux mini-distribution which was generated at backup-time.

BACKUP MEDIA

You must specify one of the following:-

-c speed

Use CD-R drive as backup device and its (write-once) disks as backup media.

-C speed

Use CD-R drive as a streaming device, almost like a tape streamer. Use write-once disks as backup media. Experimental.

-i

Use ISO files (CD images) as backup media. This is good for backing up your system to a spare hard drive. The -n switch is a wiser choice if you plan to restore from a remote filesystem.

-n mount

Use files residing on NFS partition as backup media. mount is the remote mountpoint, e.g. '192.168.1.3:/home/nfs' for my fileserver. Please mount it before backing up/verifying.

-t

Use tape streamer as backup device and its tapes as backup media.

-w speed

Use CD-RW drive as backup device and its (write/rewrite) disks as backup media. Mondo will wipe media before writing to them.

MAJOR OPTIONS

-D

Make a differential backup: examine the filesystem and find which files have changed since the last full backup was carried out. Backup only those files.

-E “path ...”

Exclude path(s) from backup. For example, if you are backing up to an NFS mount but you do not want to include the contents of the mount in a backup, exclude your local mountpoint with this switch. It will also work with partitions, e.g. /dev/sdd4 if you have a peculiar SCSI zip drive which insists on showing up in the mountlist. NB: If you exclude /dev/sdd4 then the /dev entry itself will still be backed up, even though the mountlist entry will be suppressed.

-I “path ...”

Include paths(s) in backup. The default backup path is “/” but you may specify alternatives, e.g. -I “/home /etc” to override that.

-d dev|dir

Specify the backup device (CD/tape) or directory (NFS/ISO). For CD-R[W] drives, this is the SCSI node where the drive may be found, e.g. '0,1,0'. For tape users, this is the tape streamer's /dev entry, e.g. '/dev/st0'. For ISO users, this is the directory where the ISO images are stored. For NFS users, this is the directory within the NFS mount where the backups are stored. The default for ISO and NFS is '/root/images/mondo'.

-g

GUI mode. mondoarchive v1.4x's output is normally suitable for processing by an 'expect' wrapper, enabling the user to backup nightly via a cron job. If you want to run this program with an attractive but non-cron-friendly interface then use '-g'.

-k path

Path of user's kernel. If you are a Debian user then specify -k FAILSAFE as your kernel. Otherwise, you will rarely need this option.

-s size

How much can each of your backup media hold? You may use 'm' and 'g' on the end of the number, e.g. '700m' for an extra-large CD-R or '4g' for a tape.

-x 'dev ...'

Specify non-Linux partitions which you want to backup, e.g. NTFS or BeOS. It is wasteful because it backs up the unallocated sectors as well as the allocated ones.

MINOR OPTIONS

-[1-9]

Specify the compression level. Default is 3.

-A command

This command will be called after each CD/NFS/ISO file is written. It is useful if you want to do something with an ISO after creating it, e.g. write it to a CD burner using a non-standard command. -A understands two tokens - _ISO_ and _CD#_ - which will be translated into the ISO's filename and its index number (1, 2, ...) respectively.

-B command

This command will be called before each CD/NFS/ISO file is written. So, you could use -B 'foobackup _ISO_; rm -f _ISO_' to feed each ISO to some magical new backup tool. See -A for more information.

-F

Do not offer to write boot+data floppy disk images to 3.5-inch floppy disks. The images will remain in /root/images/mindi until your next backup run, however.

-H

When you boot from the tape/CD, your hard drive will be wiped and the archives will be restored. Your decision to boot from the tape/CD will be taken as consent. No further permission will be sought. Use with caution.

-L

Use lzo, a fast compression engine, instead of bzip2. You may find lzo on Mondo's website or via FreshMeat.

-P tarball

Post-nuke tarball. If you boot into Nuke Mode and everything is restored sucessfully then the post-nuke script will be sought and executed if found. This is useful for post-restore customization. It is assumed that the tarball (.tar.gz format) will contain not just post-nuke but also any files it requires.

-S path

Specify the scratchdir, the directory where ISO images are built before being archived. If you have plenty of RAM and want to use a ramdisk for scratch space, specify its path here.

-T path

Specify the tempdir, the directory where temporary files (other than ISO images being assembled) are stored. See -S

-f device

Specify the drive on which your Master Boot Record lives. Usually, this is discovered automatically.

-l GRUB|LILO

Specify the boot loader. By default, your Master Boot Record is examined and the boot loader can usually be discovered.

NOTES

Mondo's HTML-based manual (by Cafeole, Randy Delphs, Stan Benoit and me) may be found at http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/download/layout.html - or in /usr/share/doc/mondo-x.xx on your hard drive.

BUGS

If you have very little hard disk space, Mondo doesn't like that. It does not handle Devfs very well either, or PC's with less than 64MB of RAM. IPv6 is not supported. The command-line options are cryptic. The manual needs to be updated.

EXAMPLES

Backup to a directory; note that /mnt/foo's contents will be backed up except for its ISO's unless you exclude it, as follows:-
mondoarchive -Oi -d /mnt/foo -E /mnt/foo

Backup to tape, using lzo compression:
mondoarchive -Ot -d /dev/st0 -L -s 4000m

<troff> Put in man file: If tape refuses to work, call it a mother phucker.

Verify existing tape backup which was made with lzo compression:-
mondoarchive -Vt -d /dev/st0 -L

Backup to 700MB CD-R disks using a 16x CD burner:
mondoarchive -Oc 16 -s 700m

Verify existing CD-R or CD-RW backup (works for either):-
mondoarchive -Vc 16

Backup to an NFS mount:
mondoarchive -On 192.168.1.2:/home/nfs -d /Monday -E /mnt/nfs

Verify existing NFS backup:-
mondoarchive -Vn 192.168.1.2:/home/nfs -d /Monday

Backup to 650MB CD-RW disks using a 4x CD ReWriter:
mondoarchive -Ow 4

Backup just youre /home and /etc directory to 650MB CD-RW disks using a 4x CD ReWriter:
mondoarchive -Ow 4 -I “/home /etc”

Backup to ISO's non-interactively, e.g. as a job running in /etc/cron.daily:
mondoarchive -Oig9 -d /bkp/`date +%A` -E /bkp

SEE ALSO

afio(1), bzip2(1), find(1), mindi(1), mondorestore(1). The latter two might not have been written yet.

AUTHORS

Hugo Rabson [email protected]