I am using LVM for storage to virtual machines.
One simply way to make backups (even if the machine is online) is through dd.
(but if you are using a database, online is out of question).
dd will backup the entire partition to a raw image.
Lets make an example:
# time dd if=/dev/vg01/winxp of=winxp.img bs=1024
5242880+0 records in
5242880+0 records out
5368709120 bytes (5,4 GB) copied, 111,164 s, 48,3 MB/s
So we have a 5Gb backup raw image with sparse files into.
If only there was a way to remove sparse files to reduce the size!
Wait … it does exist: virt-sparsify
# virt-sparsify winxp.img winxp.img.spars
...
Sparsify operation completed with no errors. Before deleting the old
disk, carefully check that the target disk boots and works correctly.
# ls -ltr
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5368709120 Αύγ 28 11:55 winxp.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5368709120 Αύγ 28 11:59 winxp.img.spars
# du -h *
5,1G winxp.img
3,1G winxp.img.spars
2gb sparse files have just removed !
Now you can compress the backup image to reduce the size even more:
# du -h winxp.img*
5,1G winxp.img
3,1G winxp.img.spars
1,4G winxp.img.spars.lrz
We can now remove winxp.img & winxp.img.spars (8.2Gb) from our backup storage.
I was thinking to convert to systemd for quite some time now
So every time someone mentioned something about systemd (on the internet), i was reading his/her story as my life depend on it.
I am using archlinux so when i’ve read Jason’s blog post,
i was very happy. After a few days, Allan post a similar post
and that was the moment i told my self: “It’s time, i can blame Allan for breaking my system”
I run this command
# pacman -S systemd systemd-arch-units systemd-sysvcompat
and removed sysvinit & initscripts also.
Noticed that /etc/rc.conf became /etc/rc.conf.pacsave
and rebooted my machine.
How difficult is that ?
There was also a few steps that i needed to do.
Your reading material is here: Archlinux systemd and
systemd services .
After that was trivial to enable my services.
I have only a few of them:
# grep DAEMONS /etc/rc.conf.pacsave
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network crond dbus avahi-daemon cupsd xinetd)
I use static network at work.
Followed this link to create my network service.
vim /etc/conf.d/network
vim /etc/systemd/system/network.service
# systemctl status network
# systemctl enable network.service
# systemctl status syslog-ng
# systemctl enable syslog-ng.service
be aware that cron is cronie !
systemctl status crond.service
systemctl enable cronie.service
systemctl status avahi-daemon
systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service
dbus was already enabled
systemctl status dbus
be aware that cupsd is cups
systemctl status cupsd
systemctl enable cups.service
and finally
systemctl status xinetd
systemctl enable xinetd.service
It was simplest than converted from grub to grub2 !
New installation guide, with screenshots,
for Arch Linux based on installation media 2012.08.04
Archlinux NetInstall based on media 2012.08.04
This guide doesnt use any automate script or menu installer.