Backup of new Fedora 11 Partition - YIKES!

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by ?GotJazz?, Jul 30, 2009.

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  1. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    I used my True Image Home 11 bootable CD to backup my new Linux installation, and Acronis sez my 200 GB LVM backup (of which I am using only about 15GB) will be 167 GB large and will take over a day to backup!!!

    Surely the TI 11 backup will be a lot faster and take up a lot less space, won't it? I don't want to start backing this up until I know for sure ...

    Thanks ...

    ¿GotJazz?
     
  2. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    It likely means that TI doesn't understand that type of partition/file structure. In that case it reverts to a sector-by-sector backup which means it backs up every sector in the partition instead of just the in-use sectors.
     
  3. bodgy

    bodgy Registered Member

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    In addition to what seekforever has said, it is also possible that the rescue CD has a problem with the hardware of your drive and is not utilising the most efficient driver for your system.
     
  4. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    If Fedora 11 uses 256-byte inodes then TI 11 does not know how to interpret this file system. That's probably why it reverted to doing a sector-by-sector backup.
     
  5. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    Is there a solution for this? Can I re-define the partition type so that I can backup the drive?
     
  6. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    The latest version of TI Home 2009 will understand 256-byte inodes, so one solution is to upgrade and take advantage of the current 50% off sale on TI Home.

    Another solution is to create and format your ext3 partitions with 128-byte inodes, and then install Fedora to the existing partitions. TI 11 home will understand the older 128-byte inode standard.
     
  7. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    Thanks, K0LO - Could you please point me to where the 50% off sale is mentioned at? I couldn't find it on the Acronis website.
     
  8. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    The offer for 50% off is for registered users of previous versions of TrueImage Home. You should be able to log into your account on the Acronis web site and go to the "Registered Products" section. Look under your copy of TI Home 11 for an upgrade offer. You may also have gotten an email from Acronis that includes the offer. This is from the email that I received since I have registered copies of TI 9 and TI 10:

    Offer.PNG
     
  9. gbohn

    gbohn Registered Member

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    > The offer for 50% off is for registered users of previous versions of
    > TrueImage Home

    I've previously purchased and registered TI 11, 10, etc. I logged on and I don't see this special offer. (I see 2009 listed as an upgrade, but I when I click the icon, it opens a mostly blank window...)

    Do you think this is only for certain users?

    Thanks;

    -Greg
     
  10. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Greg:

    I'm seeing the same blank window today also. There is probably an issue with the online store server.
     
  11. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    OK ... This got amusing on multiple levels!

    I contacted Acronis (through their Support Chat interface), and after sitting at the keyboard on "Hold" for about 30 minutes, they were able to send me a link to purchase the upgrade. He was very helpful, and I'm glad I was able to get the link.

    Unfortunately, things went downhill real fast after that ... :blink:

    So, I installed the new TIH-2009 on my PC. During the install, I saw some very odd screens. Take a look at the image attachment below.

    http://i30.tinypic.com/29yi5ty.jpg

    Acronis Support wasn't very helpful at this point. They retransmitted the exact same installation file to me twice, and suggested that I reinstall (even after I told them that I had reinstalled twice already). Sigh.

    However, I did figure out how to read the screens (well, sort of). I noticed that each of the odd characters being displayed was actually 2 characters lower in the Unicode table than the character that was supposed to be displayed. "A" becomes "C", "r" becomes "t", etc. So, the heading on the attached messed-up window translates from "Amldgpk_rgml" => "Confirmation".

    Whew. o_O

    So far, Acronis doesn't have an answer for that problem yet.

    But, that's not all. After I took out my Secret Decoder Ring (Patent Pending), I worked my way through the currently messy Acronis TIH-2009 interface and figured out how to burn a Bootable Media CD. If I could at least run from the Bootable Media CD (which is my preferred method, anyways), I could still backup my Fedora Core 11 installation.

    I booted up my computer, admiring the improved graphics on the new Acronis interface, and started backing up my Linux drive.

    Guess what!

    TIH-2009 told me that my backup was still going to be 167 GB Large again !

    Bummer! :'(

    Is there possibly a boot option I need to enable so that the Linux LVM drive will be seen properly?
     

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    Last edited: Aug 1, 2009
  12. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    Update: Cool! One problem solved!

    I reconnected to an Acronis Tech Support Chat person, and they figured out the weird character issue. Under "Tools >> Options ... >> Appearance >> Fonts", I needed to change the "Application" option from "< System Default >" to "Arial - 9".

    I still haven't had any success getting past a sector-by-sector image of my Linux drive, though.

    Any ideas?
     
  13. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    If TI Home 2009 wants to do a sector-by-sector backup then either it's an inode issue, an unsupported file system issue, corruption in the file system, or it is not seeing your LVM array properly. You should be able to determine if its an array issue - when choosing the partition to back up do you see the array as one disk or do you see two disks? If two, then it is an array issue.

    TI will switch into sector-by-sector mode if it detects corruption in the file system. Check your file system for corruption using fsck from a Linux boot CD with the array unmounted.

    For the inode issue, confirm that your version of TI Home 2009 is the latest build by logging into your account on the Acronis web site and checking for updates. Compare the build number of your installed version with the build number of the latest available update. I would think that if you downloaded the product from their online store yesterday that you would have gotten the latest build, but you never know.

    Which file system are you using; I had assumed ext3. If you're using ext4 then that's not a supported file system yet. More info here.
     
  14. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    Two partitions were seen on the hard drive. The 200 MB ext3 boot partition, and the 279.3 GB ext3 LVM, which TIH-2009 recognizes as type 0x8E.

    OK ... No problems were found.

    I am using Build 9796, which I believe is the most recent.

    It is ext3 now. The '/' partition within the LVM was ext4 a few days ago. I reformatted and reinstalled my Fedora 11 installation as ext3 this morning (a couple days of configuration lost, but it's more important that I be able to back-up my installation). I'm seeing the exact same "167 GB" TIH backup size with the new ext3 partition.

    I'm still hopeful that something will be figured out, though ...
     
  15. Howard Kaikow

    Howard Kaikow Registered Member

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    I suggest booting with a Fedora Live CD, or an Ubuntu Live CD, or other Live CD, to check out the partition sizes and types.

    I see you had used ext4, I doubt that TI 11 recognizes that, and I know that ADD 10 does not, so your conversion back to ext3 likely went kblooey.

    I found an article at http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/ that states that you will not be able to convert ext4 to ext3.

    Maybe, you can save the partition by using TestDisk (dunno if it now recognizes ext4), but I doubt it.
     
  16. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    Hi, Howard - I didn't convert the ext4 partition to ext3. I wiped out my old hard drive, reformatted, and reinstalled Fedora Core 11 from scratch. So, if TIH'09 can handle ext3, I would think it should be able to see the new partitions.

    Update: I booted with a Fedora 11 Live CD, and the "boot" and "/" partitions fsck'd fine. Also, when mounted (/dev/sdc1 and /dev/dm-2, respectively), both reported back as being 'ext3' partitions under the 'mount' command.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2009
  17. Howard Kaikow

    Howard Kaikow Registered Member

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    TI 9 handles ext3.
    TI 11 manual says that it handles ext3.
    I'm skipping TI 2009.
    Next version I buy would have to officially support Windows 7 and ext4.
     
  18. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    OK ... That matches my understanding as well. So, why is TIH'09 (which is also supposed to handle ext3 partitions, of course) always doing a sector-by-sector backup? Does TIH not handle LVM properly?
     
  19. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    So the array is recognized properly, and the type is reported as Linux LVM.

    I think you may have hit on it. I don't know very much about LVM, but here are some articles in the Acronis Knowledge Base that were found by searching for "Linux LVM". They do not mention True Image Home 2009, but include all kinds of workarounds for their enterprise products.

    In looking over the documentation for TI Home 2009, I don't see LVM listed explicitly as being either supported or not supported. From the User Guide, page 12:
    Note that they specifically state that Dynamic Disks on Windows are not supported, but no mention of LVM. Perhaps you should try contacting Acronis support via Live Chat on their web site and ask specifically if TI Home 2009 supports LVM.

    Psst - if unsuccessful, check out Clonezilla for Linux, which supports LVM2 and ext4 natively
     
  20. Howard Kaikow

    Howard Kaikow Registered Member

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    TI 9 does a sector by sector backup for ext3.
    You cannot MOUNT those volumes in Windows, but you can explore them.
     
  21. ?GotJazz?

    ?GotJazz? Registered Member

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    It's beginning to look like Clonezilla is my only option for now. Not sure if I'll be upgrading Acronis anymore, since the last few upgrades were a waste of money since they didn't fix the problems I was trying to resolve.

    FWIW, Clonezilla took my 20+ GB ext4 installation (I started over with a new Fedora Core 11 installation ... again), and stored it in only 1.70 GB of space. Hmmm ... Let's see ... 1.70 GB vs. 167 GB.

    What a jeopardy. I think I'll take " 'Save 165 GB of space for $0', Alex" :D

    I would have preferred to use Acronis, though.
     
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