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Restore entire disk using another machine


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I manage a small office - a combination of 4 Macs and 2 Windows PCs. One of the Macs runs OS X 10.3.9 and Retrospect 6.1.126 with clients on the other boxes. I use a File type backup set to back up all clients and the "main" Mac each night.

 

We've had our first failure and I'm having problems restoring the computer to the state it was in at its last backup. The hard drive from the failed Mac was beyond repair, so I put a new hard drive in an external enclosure and connected it to the main Mac. I did a "Restore Entire Disk" from the last good snapshot in the backup to the new hard drive. But when I put the drive back in the Mac that suffered failure it did not boot.

 

I discovered the System folder on the external drive hadn't been blessed so I did this manually but still no joy. Looking things over tonight, I discovered some of the ownerships are just wrong. Many directories that should be owned by root (like /var) are owned by the user that was logged in when the restore was performed.

 

It seems like this should be a simple process but it doesn't seem too work. Any ideas? A better process?

 

 

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It sounds like you followed the right steps. 1) When you get info on the external hard disk, make sure Ignore ownership isn't checked. That will screw up the restore

 

2) Which exact restore option did you select from the 3 restore types?

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- We don't know what "main Mac" means. Is this the machine running Retrospect?

 

- Was the failed machine one of the clients?

 

- What was the Source of the backup of this client? Was it the root level of its startup volume?

 

- How did you "bless" the system of the new Restore? Did the Restored system show up in the Startup Disk preference pane?

 

- How did the failure to boot manifest itself?

 

- What OS was on the failed/restored volume?

 

 

> Many directories that should be owned by root (like /var) are owned by the user that

> was logged in when the restore was performed.

 

This is what you would see if you did a "Restore files and folders."

Restore an entire disk (which is poorly worded and should be "Restore entire volume") will respect the permissions in the Snapshot. What do you see for ownership when you look at

Reports->Contents->YourBackupSetFoo->YourSnapshotFoo->Browse->Sample_file_or_folder->GetInfo ?

 

 

Dave

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It sounds like you followed the right steps. 1) When you get info on the external hard disk, make sure Ignore ownership isn't checked. That will screw up the restore

 

Yup. Did that.

2) Which exact restore option did you select from the 3 restore types?

 

"Restore an entire disk"

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- We don't know what "main Mac" means. Is this the machine running Retrospect?

"main Mac" = machine running Retrospect

- Was the failed machine one of the clients?

Yes

- What was the Source of the backup of this client? Was it the root level of its startup volume?

The client is set to "Backup: Client Desktop" and the script specifies the client.

- How did you "bless" the system of the new Restore? Did the Restored system show up in the Startup Disk preference pane?

Before it was blessed, no it did not show up.

 

Blessed via terminal based on example in the man page:

sudo bless -folder /Volumes/[ext HD]/System/Library/CoreServices -bootinfo /usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.bootinfo

- How did the failure to boot manifest itself?

Once the system folder had been blessed, the system appeared to start the boot process but never got to the blue background that appears just before the Starting dialog. Booting in verbose mode provides no useful info since it makes it through all messages. That's the point at which the blue background normally appears.

- What OS was on the failed/restored volume?

10.3.9

 

 

> Many directories that should be owned by root (like /var) are owned by the user that

> was logged in when the restore was performed.

 

This is what you would see if you did a "Restore files and folders."

Restore an entire disk (which is poorly worded and should be "Restore entire volume") will respect the permissions in the Snapshot. What do you see for ownership when you look at

Reports->Contents->YourBackupSetFoo->YourSnapshotFoo->Browse->Sample_file_or_folder->GetInfo ?

Retrospect contents show the correct permissions and owner (root... not the user that did the restore as it shows up on the restored volume)

 

 

 

Dave

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Retrospect contents show the correct permissions and owner (root... not the user that did the restore as it shows up on the restored volume)

 

I think the first thing you should do is confirm that Retrospect can and does maintain permissions when used correctly.

 

With an empty volume (can be a partition) as your Destination, pre-flight an Immediate Restore using the "Entire disk" option. Under Files Chosen, select a small directory such as /bin or /var (or /private/var) and mark it for Restore. Execute the Restore, and inspect the folder on the Destination volume. What do you see?

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