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erin c
Asked: 2012-03-30 04:11:13 +0800 CST

how to get a linux image and restore it on another computer

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I am trying to use dd command to accomplish complete restore of a linux image on a new computer. I have two partitions sda1(main) and sda2(extended), I took a backup of mbr image using:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/mbr_image bs=512 count=1

and dbr image as follows:

dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/mnt/sdb1/ebr_image bs=512 count=1

I also took a backup of main partition(the one that I want to restore) using:

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/mnt/sdb1/sda1_image

I open the new system with a slax cd and first restore mbr and ebr images that I backed up before(I didn't use 446 bytes, because I want to restore the partition table as well)

dd if=/mnt/sdb1/mbr_image of=/dev/sda
dd if=/mnt/sdb1/ebr_image of=/dev/sda2

after that I restore main partition:

dd if=/mnt/sdb1/sda1_image of=/dev/sda1

once it finishes I resize the main partition using following set of commands:

umount /dev/sda1
e2fsck -f /dev/sda1
resize2fs /dev/sda1 -p

after this point I restart the computer hoping that I restored everything correctly. Unfortunately when I do this on a new computer whose hard drive has never been used before, Computer gets stuck in grub bootloader saying GRUB...

I am suspecting that there's something machine specific in mbr image because if I run the same restore process on the machine that I took back up, everything works fine and machine boots normally.

Can you please shed some light on what I've been doing wrong for the last 2 days...

linux restore grub mbr

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I know that it is a solution that forces you to do all the work from beginning but I will recomend using Clonezilla to do backup and restore it to new machine. Specialy if you need restore image on many machines

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  2. I would try partimage for what you're trying to do. dd is a little crude, copies byte for byte. A 500 gig hd would = a 500 gig image. You would not have this issue with partimage.

    Also running a partimage server would allow you to restore that image on multiple computers quickly.

    Hope this helps. I know its not a dd answer.

    • 1

  3. Did you try to reinstall grub to new sda?

    Are the disks, old and new, the same size? If they are, dd the entire disk and it should work.

    If not, you can transfer files with rsync or tar, and the use livecd to reinstall grub.

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