TI Echo workstation and CentOS

Having an issue when I attempt to backup a CentOS machine. Specifically TI is seeing the entire partition as occupied space and creating the image as so. Thus giving me 80-100GB images, when in reality they should only be a couple gig.

Anyone have an ideas on how can I fix this?

 

drewdown:

Was your CentOS partition formatted with 256-byte inodes? Which version of TI are you using?

A lot of the newer Linux distributions have switched from 128-byte to 256-byte inode size. Most TI versions only support inode-128. If your version of TI does not support inode-256 it will back up all of the sectors, making for a really large archive file. Support for inode-256 was only added recently by Acronis. Only the latest couple of builds of TI Home 2009 support inode-256.

 

Thanks Mark.

I am not even sure how it was formatted but I can find out, nothing special though, just defaults FWIW. My build of TI Echo Workstation (not 2009 home) is Build 8,206. That latest build I I see on Acronis' website is Acronis TrueImage Echo Workstation Build # 8353 July 01, 2009 356.2 MB.

However I don't see anything in the release notes regarding inode-256.

 

drewdown:

Here's how you can find the inode size of your Linux partitions.

You'll probably have to ask Acronis whether they have a version of Echo Workstation that supports inode-256 if that's what's in use on your disk.

Another alternative for you is to reinstall CentOS to an ext3 file system with 128-byte inodes. Perhaps the installer will let you choose the disk format during installation, or if not you could install to an already-formatted partition.

 

We are using an ext3 file system already and I didn't format it, the person that did just checked and we are using 128, so that rules that possibility out.

Any other idea's?

 

If Acronis does not understand the file system, or if it detects errors, it backs up every sector. You might have file system errors. From a Live Linux CD, run the file system check, fsck, on every partition (while they are dismounted) to see if there are any errors.

 

Thanks K0LO, I don't think there should be an issue, but there obviously is.

Supportchat just told me that any ext3 filesystem and LVM acronis archives it will archive each sector, thus resulting in a huge archive file.

 

That isn't true for the home versions of True Image. I back up ext3 partitions all the time and they compress very well. You may have to try to get a different support tech to answer next time.

 

Hello drewdown and K0LO,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

Just for a confirmation:

The latest builds of the corporate versions (build #8353) supports ext3 file system with 256-bite inode.

drewdown,

I would recommend you to follow the advice posted by Mark and to check the file system for errors. Also I would recommend to update the program to the latest build. You can learn more on how to download the latest build here

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee