Backup almost working, LILO hangs

[bevenson]

First, my setup:

-Intel DG965RYCK motherboard w/ P4
-One DVD-ROM drive on the parallel port (/dev/sda)
-One SATA hard drive (/dev/hda)
-Lunar v. 1.6.0 with kernel v. 2.18.2, LILO v. 22.7.3
-Partitions (all except /swap are ext3 filesystems):

/dev/sda1 - /boot
/dev/sda2 - /
/dev/sda3 - /swap
/dev/sda5 - /var
/dev/sda6 - /usr
/dev/sda7 - /home

I have two computers with the same hardware and software setup, mentioned above. Both setups were up and running just fine with the above configuration. I am trying to get a backup working, so I am testing it by backing up Computer A and trying to recover on Computer B. The recovery appears to run fine, but when I boot Computer B after the recovery LILO gives me the error "EBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage."

I've booted from the recovery disk to get to a bash shell, and I've tried running LILO to try and fix things. Here's what I've tried, and the results:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt/local
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/local/boot
cd /mnt/local/sbin
lilo -C /mnt/local/etc/lilo.conf -v -v

LILO command outputs:
Fatal: Trying to map files from your RAM disk. Please check -r option or
ROOT environment variable.

When I change the LILO command to this:
lilo -r /mnt/local -v -v

it outputs:
Fatal: raid_setup: stat("dev/sda")

At this point I don't know what is causing the problems with setting up LILO. Anyone know what may be going wrong? Any other info I could provide that would help?

Thanks,
Bryan

[bevenson]

Hmmmm, maybe I'm approaching this wrong.

What do you guys use for a backup utility under Lunar? I've been trying to use mkCDRec, and I've been having more problems than the ones I mentioned in my last post. I also haven't found anyone else that is using it, which may mean I should be using something else. Here's what I'm looking for in a backup utility:

-Ability to make backup as a bootable CD (being able to just create the ISO image without burning the CD right away would be a bonus)
-Option of performing a full system restore, or just restoring selected partitions

Have any of you been successfully using a tool under Lunar that accomplishes this?

Thanks,
Bryan

P.S. Amendment to my last post. I'm actually using Lunar v. 1.6.1, not 1.6.0.

[sofar]

if you want to reinstall lilo on your partitions and you booted from a cdrom, the easiest is to use 'chroot' as follows:

1) boot the cdrom
2) mount root and /boot filesystems:

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

3) mount /dev, /proc and /sys in the chroot as well:

mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys

4) chroot and run lilo

chroot /mnt
vi /etc/lilo.conf
lilo


(and of course, unmount it all again once done)

Using this method, you don't have to figure out lilo's weird parameters and what is going on with device nodes and stuff.

hth,

Auke