Iris

Iris is a Sharp PC-M4000 laptop

She came with XP Pro installed. I spent a few evenings playing with it, updating it and installing Firefox and ArcMap and so on. Now I want to start serious work so I need to install Linux on the machine. I want the system to be dual boot.

Backups

Right now I am using Linux to create a backup image before installing Ubuntu. I booted from the Ubuntu 6.06 cdrom and will use the dd command to create images of the drive partitions.

It has 4 partitions.

1    1 7649 07  NTFS            61 GB  Drive C:
2 7650 9091 0f  W95             11 GB  Drive D:
3 9092 9729 de  "Dell Utility"  1/2 GB
-
5 7650 9091 07  NTFS            Drive D: by another name

I presume that the third partition is the recovery partition. No need to back up sda2 as it is completely empty.

How not to back up large partitions

This does not work because zip has a 4gb limit. Everything proceeds just fine until 4 gb have been passed over the pipe. Then zip quits.

dd if=/dev/sda1 | zip | ssh -l root bread 'cat /home/backups/iris_sda1.zip' 

I can skip the zip on the recovery partion and just do

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

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 (hdX,Y)
rootnoverify (hdX,Y)
chainloader+1

I will also backup the MBR just in case it has weird stuff in it. I suspect it puts the "Press F10 to Recover" message on the screen.

ASR

Next I learned about using the Windows XP Backup command which includes an option for an ASR (Automated System Recovery) backup. I opted to put the backup onto my Linux server, 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 goodled 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.

XP recovery CD

I can boot from Ubuntu but would still be more comfortable with an XP boot cd.

and am now relatively confident that I can do a bare metal restore should it be necessary. The files are even little.

Links

Fedora on the M4000