Centos 5 Restoration Errors

[microproc]

I have a server HP DL 360 G5 with two drives of 146 GB (Raid 1). I have taken a backup image with DD command (entire drive image c0d0) which took almost 10 hours. When i restored this on ESX 4 (first booted with Knopix & then use dd to restore ), restoration tooks almost 10 to 11 hours. Restoration done without errors but when i start the VM in esx 4. it give below errros and never starts:

Errors:

No Volumes Group found

VolumeGroup00 not found:

Could not found /dev/root/

error mount /proc no such file or directory

error mounting /sys no such file or directory

Kernel Panic: Not syncing : Attempted to kill init !

I am restoring this image on xw6600 HP workstation having SATA Drives (1 Terabytes Raid 1) . I have tried making identical configurations like harddisk space etc. I also tried installing fresh Centos 5 which works fine and then restore the image but it also didnt work and ends on the same errors mentiond above.

Has any body idea how should i make this work. Also if any body can tell me better solutions to take the linux image as 10 hours is a very huge time. I use symantec backup for windows and it takes maximum 2 to 4 hours in worst cases.

Hope if some body replies and gives better solutions.

Regards

[AndreTheGiant]

If you take a block level image (with dd) you clone also the source hardware configuration.

For this reason it cannot work, cause you need SCSI and network drivers for the VM virtual hardware.

Use VMware Standalone Converter 4 to make the clone (it will also change the hardware configuration in your OS).

Or manually fix the modules configuation.

Andre

[microproc]

Hi

Thanks for replying. I just saw the standalone converter technical documents and in supported platforms, Centos is no where. Only RHEL & Suse & Ubuntu are main linux distros in supported platform. Have you tested this on Centos.

Any other solution other then DD (and standalone converter) which takes the image and restore without getting or keeping the hardwar configurations etc, specially which takes less time as i mentioned 11 hours is really a long for image and then again 11 hours for restoring.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to Virtual Machine and Guest OS.

SInce it works for RHEL it will work for CentOS, Converter is the proper tool.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, Virtualization Practice Analyst[/url]
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