<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >What Now?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Some Advice for Disaster Recovery" HREF="someadvicefordisasterrecovery.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="The Scripts" HREF="thescripts.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="someadvicefordisasterrecovery.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="thescripts.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="WHATNOW" ></A >10. What Now?</H1 ><P >This HOWTO results from experiments on one computer. No doubt you will find some directories or files you need to back up in your first stage backup. I have not dealt with saving and restoring X on the first stage, nor have I touched at all on processors other than Intel.</P ><P >I would appreciate your feedback as you test and improve these scripts on your own computers. I also encourage vendors of backup software to document how to do a minimal backup of their products. I'd like to see the whole Linux community sleep just a little better at night.</P ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="TODO" ></A >10.1. To Do</H2 ><P >Volunteers are most welcome. Check with me before you start on one of these in case someone else is working on it already.</P ><P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >We have no way to determine the label of a swap partition. This means that there is no way to provide the swap partition's label when restoring. We could assume that a system with a single swap partition (as indicated by fdisk) has the label used in the swap partition line in <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >/etc/fstab</TT >, but that only works on single hard drive systems, and could produce subtle errors in systems with multiple swap partitions.</P ><P >The work-around is to add the label by hand by re-running <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >mkswap</TT > with the -L option on it. Sigh.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >A partition editor to adjust partition boundaries in the <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >dev.hdx</TT > file. This will let users adjust partitions for a different hard drive, or the same one with different geometry, or to adjust partition sizes within the same hard drive. A GUI would probably be a good idea here. On the other tentacle, the FSF's <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/software/parted" TARGET="_top" ><TT CLASS="FILENAME" >parted</TT ></A > looks like it will fill part of the bill. It does re-size existing partitions, but with restrictions.</P ></LI ><LI ><P ><A HREF="thescripts.html#MAKE.FDISK" ><TT CLASS="FILENAME" >make.fdisk</TT ></A > currently only recognizes some FAT partitions, not all. Add code to <A HREF="thescripts.html#MAKE.FDISK" ><TT CLASS="FILENAME" >make.fdisk</TT ></A > to recognize others and make appropriate instructions to rebuild them in the output files.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >For FAT12 or FAT16 partitions we do not format, write zeros into the partition so that Mess-DOS 6.x does not get confused. See the notes on <B CLASS="COMMAND" >fdisk</B > for an explanation of the problem.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >Translations into other (human) languages.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >I've referred to Red Hat Package Manager (rpm) from time to time. What are the equivalent deb commands?</P ></LI ><LI ><P >Modify the first stage backup code to only save the current kernel.</P ></LI ></UL ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="someadvicefordisasterrecovery.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="thescripts.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Some Advice for Disaster Recovery</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >The Scripts</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >