Iris

Iris is a Sharp PC-M4000 laptop

XP on Iris

Iris came with XP Pro installed. I spent a few evenings playing with it, updating it and installing Firefox and ArcMap and so on.

I actually think that XP is nice. I am bothered that every account created had administrator rights. I still remember Bill Gates saying that he was concerned about Windows security but I knew at the time he was not serious. I fixed it anyway. I created a separate 'root' account with admin rights then removed admin rights from my regular account.

Linux on Iris

Now I want to start serious work so I need to install Linux on the machine. I want the system to be dual boot. I still want to be able to test software under XP, and I want to be able to run ArcMap. So I need XP for some things and Linux for others.

I installed Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake" from CDROM. I have read up on it and heard that the only feature I will lose right now is "suspend to ram"; I can live with this. I suspect it will be out soon anyway.

But before installing, I did a set of backups!

Complete XP Backups

I need to be able to do a bare metal recovery should I lose the hard drive or completely mess up the system during conversion to dual boot. After exploring with Ubuntu booted from the live cd and reading info on the web I determined that I can safely trash the MBR (master boot record) and still recover the system using Grub (the GNU boot loader). To be confident that I can rebuild the system, I need to have

1. a copy of the recovery partition,
2. an XP backup in ASR format,
3. the ASR floppy disk files,
4. and an Ubuntu cd to re-install the Grub MBR.

Recovery partition backup

To do this, I booted from the Ubuntu 6.06 cdrom and used the dd command to create an image of the drive 'recovery' partition. The drive is partitioned like this:

  start  end   ID  filesystem      size 
1     1  7649  07  NTFS            61 GB  Drive C:
2  7650  9091  0f  W95             11 GB  Drive D:
3  9092  9729  de  "Dell Utility"  5 GB   This is the recovery partition
-
5  7650  9091  07  NTFS            Drive D: by another name

sda2 is empty so I am ignoring it; I will delete it when I install Ubuntu.

This is the command I used.

dd if=/dev/sda3| ssh -l root bread 'cat /home/backups/iris_sda3'

I tried 'zipping' the partition but found zip has a 4 GB size limit.

After backup I can use the 'file' command on the server. This is interesting:

# file iris_sda3 
iris_sda3: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x58, OEM-ID "MSWIN4.1",
sectors/cluster 8, Media descriptor 0xf8, heads 255,
hidden sectors 146046915, sectors 10249470 (volumes > 32 MB) ,
FAT (32 bit), sectors/FAT 9994, rootdir cluster 91,
reserved3 0x800000, serial number 0x3d40315d, label: "  PQSERVICE"

I should be able to boot a VMWare machine from it using a grub entry similar to this

unhide (hd0,2)
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader+1

These commands could be placed in a menu.lst grub file or entered on the command line at boot time. Since I intend to delete the partition now that it is backed up, I won't be keeping the entries in menu.lst.

ASR

The Windows XP Pro "Backup" command includes an option for an ASR (Automated System Recovery) backup. I opted to put the backup onto my Linux server via Samba, which worked fine right up until it asked me to insert a floppy. Iris does not have a flopppy drive. I briefly considered jumping on my bike and seeking out a USB floppy drive but this is silly. I never intend to USE the backup. It is just a safety net. I googled and found this:

http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/ASP/Windows-Server-Hacks-12-77-and-98/2/

"During the ASR backup process, you’re asked to insert a blank, formatted floppy to create a system recovery disk (commonly called an ASR floppy). This floppy is critical to the ASR restore process, so it’s worth digging a little deeper into how it’s used. The ASR backup process saves two files onto your floppy: the ASR state file ( asr.sif), which contains information about the disk signatures and configuration of disk volumes on your machine, and asrpnp.sif, which contains information about different Plug and Play devices on your system. These two files are critical for the recovery of your system, because they connect the underlying hardware configuration with the operating system above it. As we’ll see in a moment, you need to insert this floppy at the beginning of the ASR restore, in order to rebuild the disk subsystem and hardware configuration of your system before restoring the contents of the system and boot volumes.

"What if you have no floppy disk drive on your machine? Fortunately, you can still use ASR to back up your system, but its a bit of a workaround. During the ASR backup process copies of these asr.sif and asrpnp.sif files are also saved in the %SystemRoot%\Repair folder on your server. So, when you receive a prompt at the end of the backup process to insert a floppy, simply ignore the prompt and instead copy asr.sif and asrpnp.sif from Repair to a network share on another server (one that has a floppy disk drive installed). Then, copy the files from the share on that server to a blank floppy you insert into its drive, and you now have a working ASR floppy for your backup. Then, go buy a USB external floppy drive, because you’ll need it if you ever have to rebuild your original server from the backup set you created. In other words, you can perform ASR backup without a floppy, but you cannot perform an ASR restore without one."

I have saved copies of these little files.

I can boot from Ubuntu but would still be more comfortable with an XP boot cd. I refuse to get bent out of shape about this though. I can really live without XP on the laptop if I were to lose it. And I am now relatively confident that I can do a bare metal restore should it be necessary. I would have to first restore the recovery partition from the backup on Bread using Ubuntu, then boot from it. This would allow restoring a bootable copy of XP, which could then be used to run the ASR restore. I'd be back in business then.

The only truly inconvenient part would be having to shell out for a USB floppy drive at that point to load up the asr files. I will deal with that if it ever happens.

Ubuntu install

My first impulse was to delete the 5 GB recovery partition on the first installation of Ubuntu and the funny 11 GB drive D: partition to free up the space. I quelled this impulse and instead let Ubuntu shrink the first partition. If all goes well I will then install a second time and delete the unused recovery and windows partitions.

This is an 80 GB drive, there is lots of space on there anyway. Ubuntu split /dev/sda1 in half. I will have roughly 30 GB for Windows and 30 for Ubuntu.

I will probably end up getting a faster hard drive before I get around to repartitioning. This is an 80 GB 5400 rpm SATA drive and I'd like to put in a Seagate "Momentus" 7200 rpm drive. I am sure I can live with "just" 30 GB until a higher capacity Seagate drive comes along. Right now it is 03-August-2006 and Newegg has the 100 GB model for $175. Too much right now for only a 20GB increase. Though it would be nice to put the original one into 8track.

Upgrade to 100 GB drive

December 2006 I got the 100 GB Seagate Momentus drive for $140 or so.

I am doing C# software with Visual Studio 2005 and I almost never boot into Ubuntu on this computer, so I decided to go with more space for XP and a smaller Debian Linux partition. I decided the extra speed of a 7200 rpm drive is worth it to me now.

I am also able to boot R.I.P. from a 256 MB compact flash card in a card reader, which is how I intend to do the backup and restore procedure. I will copy the XP partitions to a server, swap in the new hard drive, and restore them. I will install Debian onto a blank partition along with GRUB and then I will be all set.

Existing partitioning scheme

/dev/hdc1 32  NTFS drive C:        backup and restore with dd
/dev/hdc2 12  Win95 ???            some artifact of Ubuntu repartition??
/dev/hdc3  5  DELL utility         backup again via dd
/dev/hdc4 27  Linux                Ubuntu, don't save it
/dev/hdc5 11  Windows 95 drive D:  backup and restore using samba
/dev/hdc6  1  Linux SWAP

The plan

/dev/hdc1 32 NTFS drive C:         
/dev/hdc2  * the rest, as drive D:
/dev/hdc3  5 Linux                 install from scratch
/dev/hdc4  2 SWAP

Links

Fedora on the M4000