Advanced Desktop: Taking Backups with Mondo

Taking and securing a back up of the OS and your data is very essential, not only for those who are using the machine as an office workstation but also for those who are using it for personal needs. 

PCQLinux 2004 includes Mondo for taking backups. However, due to some last minute issues, we were not able to include two components–mindi and afio–that would have allowed you to take out of the box backups. 

Installing Mondo

To install Mondo, when your system is up and running with PCQLinux 2004, download mindi-0.87-2 and afio-2.4.7 from the Net (or wait for the next month’s PCQuest CDs to come). The packages you have to download are mindi-0.87-2 from ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/ Mandrake-devel/contrib/i586/mindi-0.87-2mdk. noarch.rpm and afio-2.4.7 from
ftp://rpmfind. net/linux/SuSE-Linux/i386/8.2/suse/i586/afio-2.4.7-176.i586.rpm. 

Now place the PCQLinux 2004 CD 3 in your drive and install the LiLo rpm by issuing the following command.




#rpm -ivh lilo-21.4.4-24.i386.rpm



Next, install the afio and mindi packages one at a time by running the following commands.




#rpm -ivh afio-2.4.7-176.i586.rpm

#rpm -ivh mindi-0.87-2mdk.noarch.rpm



Now, from the PCQLinux 2004 CD 3, install the Mondo rpm.



#rpm -ivh mondo-1-67-1.i386.rpm

You are ready to take back ups of your PCQLinux 2004 system.

Taking backups

To create a bootable disk for your backed-up data, run the mindi command in the terminal and follow the steps that are echoed in the terminal by mindi. When the process is done, run the mondoarchive command that will create the backup for your data. 



#mondoarchive -Oc 2 -d 0,0,0 -9 -S /mnt/mondo_disk
-E /tmp/




With this command we are creating the image in a scratch directory mounted in /mnt/mondo_disk. Here the -Oc specifies that you want to write to a CD-R. You can change the -Oc to -Or to specify it to write on a CD-RW. Now it will take some time to create the back up on the CDs. The number for CDs can vary depending upon the size of data that you are taking the back up of. 



Restoring your content 

Recovering the data is very easy with the Nuke mode. Just boot with the first CD and supply the other CDs (if created during backup) when asked and it will re-create your machine just like it was at the pint of backing up.

There are other modes of recovering the data also, like Interative and Expert Mode, in which you get more options ranging from resizing your partition to re-formatting it. To know more about these modes read the article titled Free Back up for Linux Installations in the October 2003 issue of PCQuest. Or, visit
www.pcquest.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?arid=50097&way=search.

Anindya Roy