Mondo Rescue: News

Arkeia has an article on the dangers of using an in-house backup software solution (well, anything but Arkeai, really) for backing up your Linux network. It refers obliquely to a "tar-based utility that uses NFS for network capability". Mondo uses afio, so I'm sure they're not referring to Mondo, are they? The article was written by the CEO of Arkeia, incidentally, so it's not exactly impartial and unbiased in its recommendation of, um, Arkeia.

New snapshots. Use -P /usr/local/share/mondo/post-nuke-sample.tgz for fun times. Post-nuke is one of Mondo's most interesting features but not very well documented.

New finals! I've fixed some bugs in stabgrub-me (the script which modifies /etc/fstab and /etc/grub.conf in the event of modifications to the partition table at restore-time). Hopefully, users will now with greater ease and reliability be able to backup their PCs with a view to restoring them to a different disk geometry or partition layout or formatting scheme.

Mondo is a team effort. The relationship goes something like this. I'll release a new snapshot. Someone will report a bug but won't give me enough information for me to pursue the bug myself. I'll ask the user to supply a log file, repeating the request which is in 24pt lettering on the web page containing the subscription details of the mailing list and is printed in the Welcome message of said list, all of which the user will have seen before posting their problem to the mailing list. Then, the user posts the log. I read the log. The log says, 'Install X'. I report this to the user, whose problem miraculously disappears.

Or - here's my favorite - a user reports a problem with the latest final release. I point out that a newer release, the snapshot, is available. I add that the Feedback web page makes it clear that the user should try the latest snapshot before reporting a problem. Again, the problem disappears.

Jesse Keating fields a lot of questions. Stan does the bulk of testing, using a variety of hardware. The users use Mondo, which is all I can reasonably expect them to do. However, some users feel they are entitled to complain. Ungrateful freeloaders to a man, these users not only expect something for nothing but have the audacity to complain if for some reason they aren't given it on a silver platter. It must be lovely to have people write software for you for free, give it to you for free, and pull your nuts out of the fire for free.

Let's all show a bit more gratitude to one another. Let's show some grace. Let's not bite the hand that feeds us.

Finally! I've finished uploading the website and its updates to www.microwerks.net/~hugo - please note that it's my own 56k dial-up connection which is the problem, not Microwerks itself. The good news is Joe Cooper at Swelltech (host of www.mondorescue.org) has shown me a way to copy the Microwerks site to the Mondorescue site quickly, easily, and remotely. I am very relieved.

Able to upload in bulk. Slow as molasses but at least I don't need to reboot every 2 hours. I've fixed a lot of bugs in 1.6x and 1.7x, thanks to the new hardware I've been able to buy as a result of the generosity of Mondo's users. (That and my credit card. *g*) New snapshots are on the way.

Still piddling about with Samba, NFS, etc. Heterogeneous computing is a pain, is it not? I'm still trying to upload the new website.

Yay! I've moved everything - the website, the source, the build scripts - to a little Linux box with a Samba server. This means I'll be able to continue to use the laptop (running Windows XP) to maintain the website (with WebExpress) and upload it (over a BT OpenWorld Internet connection) but I won't have to keep booting between Windows and Linux to do it. I'll build a new version of Windows on the desktop, then upload it using the laptop (which will publish the website, tarballs and RPMs living on the desktop but accessed via Samba). Neat, eh?

New stable and unstable snapshots are out. I think I've fixed the ISO problem. Oh, and I've got a new mini-PC which means I'll now be able to start running some proper tests on Mondo.

New stable and unstable snapshots are out. Mumble bugfixes grumble logfiles. :) You know the drill.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 08:15:06AM -0000 or thereabouts, Conor Daly wrote:
> 2. If you can think of a way to make a cronjob interact with a tty (e.g.
> keyboard) then you can do it. You see, there needs to be something to prompt
> Mondo to start writing CD #2. Normally, that's you, hitting the Enter key.
>put 'screen <your mondoarchive command goes here>'
>in your crontab. Then do
># screen -list
>to see what screens are active and
># screen -r
>to reattach the existing screen so you can hit^Wgently
>press <enter> for the next CD

Mondo v1.63 and Mindi v0.83 are out. They include numerous bugfixes. Owing to my recent relocation from the US to the UK, development is at a standstill. This will change when my insurance company replaces the lightly toasted Compaq, when TekHeads sends me a mini-PC that doesn't segfault after a few minutes of heavy activity, etc.

You see, the development PC was damaged in transit as I was returning from the States. When I plugged it into the wall, all the lights went out - in the building, not just the PC. (Yes, I flipped the switch to make it handle 240 volts instead of the Stateside 110 volts.)

Finally, I bought a mini-PC, a Shuttle XPC SN41G2, from TekHeads. It insisted on generating sig11 faults while compiling a kernel or backing up its hard disk. That is not good. I had to put a particular stick of RAM in a particular slot on the motherboard or the thing wouldn't run properly. It didn't matter which CPU I used. I shipped the whole thing back to TekHeads.

In the meantime, Norwich Union still hasn't replaced the toasted desktop PC. They have, however, managed to lose the paperwork once already. (I offered to mail them a copy of mine. Lo! and behold, they found it again.) Ho-hum. At least the laptop is behaving.

The crowning turd in the water pipe is the fact that I now have to upload 30MB+ via my 56k dial-up connection each time I release a new snapshot. That would be fine, except that BT OpenWorld likes to hang up the phone every two hours.

The laptop has been repaired. The desktop has been declared toast and will be repaired soon. Norwich Union is taking its own sweet time because it, like me, has trouble believing that the Department of Homeland Security managed to toast not one but two PCs passing through Customs in my luggage. Of course, I wouldn't dream of implying that it was their fault. They probably thought I was smuggling weapons-grade plutonium in my little $500 Compaq. That is just plain silly. Everyone knows Dell is the choice of the smart smuggler.

<ender> hugo: btw, I successfully backed up a phoebe system, using -Oi -d /home/mondo -s 4g and then burned the big ISO to DVD+RW (using growisofs), then booted/restored off that DVD disk.

<ender> to make mondo support it, it's quite easy. once the ISO is written, instead of cdrecord, just call: growisofs -Z /dev/scd0=file.iso

The new final stables and unstables are out. They are taking a little while to upload, so be patient.

The new snapshots are out. They work around some more eccentricities in your favorite Linux distributions. (Do you see a pattern here?) Also, my e-mail address is changing from hugo@firstlinux.net to hugorabson@msn.com; yes, please make fun of it because it's a Microsoft e-mail address. No-one has ever done that before. :) Please send all the spam you can. Thanks.

The new snapshots work around some more eccentricities in your favorite Linux distributions.

Happy New Year! The new 1.6x/0.8x snapshots include some minor bugfixes. The new 1.7x/0.9x snapshots include some additional features, such as the -J flag to let the user supply their own list of files to be backed up.

Mondo 1.61 and Mindi 0.61 are out! They incorporate major bugfixes, especially to Mondo's NFS support.

Should XMondo be written using Kdevelop, Kylix, Glade, ... what? Please vote at the Feedback page.

Jesse "KP" Keating has cleaned up my spec files a lot, bless his little cotton socks. (That's a British expression. No, it's not supposed to sound gay. That's just how we Britons talk. Go figure.) I am releasing new snapshots today which include his new spec files and a few minor bugfixes. If you have trouble with the final 1.60/0.80 packages then please try the snapshots.

Mondo 1.60 and Mindi 0.80 are out! Finally... :-) These are the new stable branches.

The old stable branches (1.4x, 0.6x) are still available and are being maintained by Jesse "KP" Keating. I anticipate they will continue to exist for 3-6 months.

You will see that the packages are now available for various specific Linux distributions. The generic packages were prepared on a Red Hat 7.3 Linux box; the others were generated by a nifty script - well, two scripts, really. One script copies a Linux distribution from its original CD's to the hard drive, where it stored it in (for instance) /root/distros/RT/7.3, in the Red Hat 7.3's case. The second script copies the standard Mondo (or Mindi) tarball into the directory, calls 'chroot' to make that directory the base dir, then builds the RPM/SRPM/whatever.

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. ArkLinux users will benefit from the minor changes I've made.

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. The 11/25 snapshots excluded /mnt entirely; these new snapshots do not. Also, they work better for Gentoo users than before (in theory).

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. Tape users should try this. Really. :) Mondo 1.5x now has extra checksums for verifying the integrity of your archives. It also has a proper Makefile. It supports '-l RAW' to allow users of bizarre and/or non-Open boot loaders to make Mondo play nicely with them.

I'm getting married on Feb 22nd, 2003. Although I think the whole "Hey, we're registered at Target, buy us some stuff, please!" attitude is very mercenary, it would be nice if some of Mondo's long-term users thought about sending my fiancee a card or something. Her e-mail address is meashell@hotmail.com :)

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. Lots of crucial bugfixes are included. I have now closed my 1.4x/0.6x branches. Jesse is in charge of them. He deserve a big round of 'thank you!'s from all of us.

These snapshots include some crucial fixes to Mondo's support of software RAID, particular users to use RAID and GRUB together.

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. I've merged Markus's RAID patch. Let's see what happens.

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. I've backed out KP's RAID patch (it doesn't work on my Mandrake 8.2 system) but I've kept the ListAllPartitions() patch. Mondo 1.5x now has a multithreaded make_afioballs_and_images() subroutine, which means mondo 1.5x is now 40% faster than 1.4x on average. Users are reminded that Mondo costs money to run. Users who find Mondo to be a pleasant alternative to BRU are encouraged to consider contributing to the cost of running the Mondo project.

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots incorporating KP's RAID patch and my multi-tape bugfix. Here is a quick'n'dirty way to test Mondo on multiple tapes. Do this:-

Terminal window A

Terminal window B

#mkfifo /tmp/st0

#rm /home/mondo-tape-*.dat#

#mondoarchive -OVu -d /tmp/st0 -I /usr -g1

#dd if=/tmp/st0 of=/home/mondo-tape-1.dat bs=4k count=50k [which translates to 200MB, approx.]

When prompted to insert tape 2...

#dd if=/tmp/st0 of=/home/mondo-tape-2.dat bs=4k count=50k [which translates to 200MB, approx.]

Press ENTER to continue.

When prompted to insert tape 3...

#dd if=/tmp/st0 of=/home/mondo-tape-3.dat bs=4k count=50k [which translates to 200MB, approx.]

Press ENTER to continue.

When asked to verify tape 1...

#cat /home/mondo-tape-1.dat > /tmp/st0

Press ENTER to continue.

When asked to verify tape 2...

#cat /home/mondo-tape-2.dat > /tmp/st0

Press ENTER to continue.

When asked to verify tape 3...

#cat /home/mondo-tape-3.dat > /tmp/st0

Press ENTER to continue.

This will save you from having to wait 3 hours to find that there's still something going wrong between your tape streamer, its driver and mondoarchive.

New 1.5x/0.7x snapshots. New XMondo snapshot. The 1.5x snapshots include patches by KP to make Mondo play nicely with some of the more broken RAID configurations out there.

Please note that the task of maintaining Mondo 1.4x and Mindi 0.6x will soon be passed to Jesse "KP" Keating. He has done a wonderful job of releasing the formal 1.4x/0.6x packages already. In order to free up more time for me to focus on 1.5x and 0.7x, he is going to be taking over the job of maintaining the current 'stable' branch. I expect to release a 1.6x stable branch based on 1.5x soon but I anticipate the 1.4x branch remaining in existence for another 3-6 months.

New 1.4x and 1.5x snapshots are now available. The lack of support from the Linux community, including but not limited to Mondo's 50,000+ users and 200 members of the mailing list, makes me question the wisdom of my continued, dedicated involvement in the project.

Mondo v1.47 and Mindi v0.67 are out. Many thanks go to Jesse Keating for rolling Red Hat 8-compatible and Mandrake Linux 9-compatible packages.

New snapshots for 1.4x and 1.5x users. Please download and install the corresponding snapshot of Mindi, too.

XMondo is coming along nicely. When it is ready for public consumption, I shall release the CD.

New website. Thanks to Lee Harvey for doing the bulk of the work. If you like what you see, please e-mail the mailing list to contact him. He is a gifted website designer and I am grateful for his contribution to this project.

I am currently in England, temping for dollars and organizing my INS paperwork. I miss my American fiancée but a little time apart won't kill us, I'm sure.

New snapshots, mostly to fix Debian-specific problems. Gee, Debian is hard to support. Go figure.

New stable and unstable snapshots are out. Mondo v1.5x now lets you exclude all NFS-related mounts and devices, with the '-N' switch. Also, major DevFS-related bugs have been fixed which affect NTFS users in particular.