Linux Server Out Of Space; What Is Best Option

On my current system I have drives sda, sdb, sdc; 1TB, 1.5TB, 1.5TB respectively.
SATA drive a is where I installed the OS and the other SATA drives b and c are from an old system that was linux software mirror, something I was using to play and learn. Now I have added b and c to my current system and before doing so I stopped the mirror and removed the partitions. I added the drives to my current system and used cfdisk to create one partition on each and then mounted the new drives. I then run ls and I see bin/....etc. listed in the new drive. Is this normal or when I create the new drive partitions should I use Logical instead of Primary.

Is there a way to get my drives back to non raid that I have missed doing?

Thanks

hi guys,

i want to back up my centos server that has a few virtual machines on it...i read that some people were saying dd is a very good way to do this. but a lot of people dont cause of fear of the command line.

i would like to write a script that backus up the entire hard drive to a ext usb hard drive.

i have a couple of questions though.

1) am i better off using a cloning software like acronis or storage craft.

2) can dd also restore a system to a bootable state or is it really just a backup.

3) can you still use the system while it is backing up?

thanks...

Hi, all, I am new to the forum and quite new to Linux, I am running Mint and Kali from a USB drive, all is going well with with the software and I am starting to find my way around it.

So, now to my question, I have 15 machines which all run from a CF card and the card has multiple partitions and is a Windows Embedded XP, not that the operating system makes any difference, I need to upgrade all the CF cards from 2gb to 4gb, so unfortunately Windows isn't an option to use to copy the drives as it doesn't recognise multiple partitions on a removable drive, so I cant just remove the drive, clone it and fit the new one.

What I need is a method of cloning the drive completely with both partitions, I have read about dd but cant seem to see anything about doing this with multiple partitions, as Linux sees it as two drives when I plug it in, how can I use dd or anything else to clone the drive which is bootable and has two partitions?

At some point I would like to automate the process as I could have many of these machines/drives to upgrade, is there a way to write a program that will automatically back up the drives from a USB drive and then reinstall it, I have seen this done before but I am not sure if this method did the whole drive, just the main drive or all partitions?

Hello everyone,

I recently had an issue where I lost my whole backup server due to an electrical overload causing my server to literally explode and fried all 4 of my terabyte drives.... needless to say, I have no more backups because of this, and everywhere I read about backups said that setting up a raid array would allow me to keep good backups.... boy did I learn this lesson the hard way in needing to have some sort of external backup option, which brings me to this post and my questions:

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server on an older Dell Poweredge 600sc, and I was thinking of using WD Passport 1Tb external drives to be used as my "offsite" backup option. I don't have a lot of data, and my current backup schedule is only a weekly backup, so thinking that if I have two of these passport drives so that I can have one drive offsite and one attached to the server, and rotate them every 4 weeks so as not to loose all my data.

Here's my question: Ideally, I would love to just be able to unplug the current drive, plug in the new drive and have everything work. However, I don't see this actually working, but if there's a way to do this, that would be totally awesome.... ;-)

So, realistically, I know I will have to unmount the one drive, unplug it, then plug in the new drive and mount it on the system. Is there a way to mount this to the same mount point automatically so that I don't have to rewrite my backup script each time I swap drives out so that the backups go to the same mount point? Or will the UUID's get messed up each time I do this?

Hopefully this makes sense and an easy solution can be found to accomodate this idea.....

Thanks again for all your help. This site is awesome for newbies such as myself........

Mikey

I've just started tinkering with Linux and have a question about installing it to my current machine.

I'm running Win 7 Pro and have installed Oracle VM Virtual Box on the C:\ drive which is a 256 GB SSD. I want to create a 15 GB virtual hard drive on a second internal hard drive that has more space on it, and install Zorin 9.1 to it. Currently my C: drive is about 60% full and I'd rather not fill it up past that.

So my question is: Can I run Zorin off of a hard drive other than the C: drive?

Thanks for your consideration.

Dave

hey guys, I understand how dd works. Ive been researching on it and I see that
if="" is the source of what I want to copy
of="" is that target that I want to send the back up to

so, what i am trying to do it copy my hard drive from saturn server: /dev/sda1 over SSH to my backup server skyline.

so [saturn harddrive /dev/sda1] -----backup---> [skyline:/backup/directory]


this is the command I am using
sudo ssh willc86@skyline "dd if=/dev/sda1 " | dd of=/backup/saturn.img

however, it is saying failed to open /dev/sda1/ : permission denied and I am runnign as root. any idea why?

thanks a bunch guys!

I have Linux enterprise server 11 sp3 with 3 250 GB WD blue drives in a raid 5 configuration.

Server “A” (external drive not plugged in):
Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 499.0 GB, 499021512704 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60669 cylinders, total 974651392 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00059fd2

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048     1028095      513024   83  Linux
/dev/sda2         1028096    21993471    10482688   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3        21993472   974651391   476328960   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/mapper/VG_SYSTEM-ROOT: 487.8 GB, 487755612160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 59299 cylinders, total 952647680 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/VG_SYSTEM-ROOT doesn't contain a valid partition table

I am trying to clone this machine to another server, both servers are Dell Poweredge 1900, with 3 – 250 WD drives (the only difference is the ‘B’ server has WD Cavier drives), pretty much identical machines, same processor and ram. I have a 2TB ext hard drive that I am using to store the output of DD. I have booted from the CD to a rescue system, then mounted my 2TB ext and did the following:
Code:

    # dd if=/dev/sda conv=sync,noerror bs=64k | gzip –c | split –a3 –b 2G –verbose - /mnt/exthd/

This gives me the following files on my external hard drive:
Code:

    
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 21:00 aaa
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 21:31 aab
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 21:53 aac
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:05 aad
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:10 aae
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:17 aaf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:24 aag
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:31 aah
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:37 aai
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:43 aaj
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:50 aak
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 22:56 aal
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 23:02 aam
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 23:06 aan
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 23:12 aao
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2147483648 Jan 10 23:32 aap
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  324998512 Jan 10 23:35 aaq

Now, I boot to the rescue system on server ‘B’ with the external drive plugged in, and run fdisk:
Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 498.8 GB, 498753077248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60636 cylinders, total 974127104 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00059fd2

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398933504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029167 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00015a3d

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1            2048  3907028991  1953513472    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Notice sda is only 498.8GB where on server ’A’, it was 499.0. when I try to restore my files from the DD, I get an out of space error. To restore, I use the following:
Code:

    # cat /mnt/exthd/aa* | gunzip –c | dd of=/dev/sda
    
dd: writing to ‘/dev/sda’:  No space left on device
974127105+0 records in
974127104+0 records out
498753077248 bytes (499 GB) copied, 37067.3 s, 13.5MB/s

My guess, is that although the drives are the same capacity (3 – 250GB in RAID 5 array), the number of cylinders is different because it is a different model, and that is where it is running out of space, although I wouldn’t think it would.

Please correct me if I am wrong as I am a newbie, but if I do “# dd if=/dev/sda” that will take all the partitions with it? Such as sda1, sda2, sda3 correct?

I'm trying to install Debian 7.8 on my eMac G4 (700mhz, 640 Mb RAM). I've tried multiple methods but I keep running into problems one way or another. Since my eMac only has a Sony CD-RW drive and a busted Ethernet port I can't install from a DVD nor a netinstall CD which would be the easiest options unfortunately. First I tried using the multiple CD option, which seemed promising at first; until I had to swap to the next disk during "configure the package manager". it won't eject the CD when I use the eject key on my keyboard (imac g3 pro keyboard so I go back to the main menu and select the "eject a CD from the drive" option at the near bottom then things seem to get clustered. When I tried inserting the next disk, nothing else will install. It keeps telling me I need disk 1 again through every step. Then at the end, it tells me the installation is complete before I even install a desktop environment from the final CD. Then I just end up booting into garbled text and errors.

After all of that nonsense, I tried making a bootable USB from the DVD ISO with the OS X terminal. This method usually works with just about anything I've done before. However for some reason Debian apparently simply refuses to boot. As I tried selecting it on the boot menu on the start up, it gives me a black screen then goes straight back to the boot screen with disordered graphics. When I tried booting it from open firmware, it goes to the first screen, then when I hit enter to actually boot to the installer, nothing but errors. Finally I tried booting it straight from the ISO file on the hard drive, that method didn't even work at all.

Could someone point out what I'm doing wrong if possible or perhaps recommend me a different option?

We are going in cricles to try to get our Ubuntu installation (14.04.1) to allow us to load Ubuntu's operating system to the 500 GB drive which is always set up somehow as SDC. We do not want the BOOT LOADER on the RAID Arrays, but on the 500 GB drive. We have two sets of RAID arrays in one box/enclosure.

/dev/sda - 18 TB RAID Array
/dev/sdb - 12 TB RAID Array
/dev/sdc - 500 GB Raptor Drive <-- We want this one to be the sda drive and where we'd load the BOOT LOADER also.

How do we do this?

Guys i think this is a pretty common problem but i am facing it and i am unable to find a solution (

So here is what happened. I performed dual booting into through Xubuntu10.4 and this will happen because i wanted to increase the memory of my Xubuntu platform.

I removed some space from my C drive and with the free space, i created another partition which then causes this problem.

This is the image...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/53j25v51b2...35925.jpg?dl=0


Please help, does it mmean all my data is gone in my xubuntu platform ???