<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 5:40 AM, Sergey Vlasov <<a href="mailto:vsu@altlinux.ru">vsu@altlinux.ru</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 12:57:22AM +0800, Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming) wrote: [...] <div class="im">> # VM 11: Rocks 5.1 x86_64 HPC Compute Cluster HVM domU > > kpartx -av /dev/virtualmachines/rocks0001 > > dd if=/dev/virtualmachines/rocks0001 of=$DEST/rocks0001.mbr bs=512 count=1 > > partimage -d -M -b -z1 save /dev/mapper/virtualmachines-rocks0001p1 > $DEST/virtualmachines-rocks0001p1.img > > partimage -d -M -b -z1 save /dev/mapper/virtualmachines-rocks0001p2 > $DEST/virtualmachines-rocks0001p2.img > > partimage -d -M -b -z1 save /dev/mapper/virtualmachines-rocks0001p5 > $DEST/virtualmachines-rocks0001p5.img </div>Note that this VM (and some other VMs listed in your script) uses logical partitions. In this case just saving a copy of MBR will not be enough to save partition layout - MBR describes only 4 primary partitions, and restoring just MBR will not restore extended partitions. One way to backup the complete partition layout is by saving also the output of "sfdisk -d $device"; the resulting file can be used as input to sfdisk to restore all partitions, including logical ones. Saving MBR is still needed together with sfdisk, because it saves the boot code (used for HVM) and CHS geometry information (which can be used during boot in some cases). -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkr8gM8ACgkQW82GfkQfsqLa+QCaAqpO5NWhYHtKVi3M5ytERw27 eC0AnjsJuG34MAR1jZRejBiJCVybQvc1 =RRGH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list <a href="mailto:Xen-users@lists.xensource.com">Xen-users@lists.xensource.com</a> <a href="http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users" target="_blank">http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users</a> </blockquote></div> Thank you for pointing this out. Otherwise I would made incomplete backups. Would it be best practice to always backup both the MBR and the partition geometry using sfdisk whenever cloning our harddisks on desktops and servers? Besides sfdisk, there are also other partitioning tools like fdisk, cfdisk, and parted. Could these other tools also be used for backing up the partition geometry like sfdisk? Thank you. -- Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming) Dip(Mechatronics) BEng(Hons)(Mechanical Engineering) Alma Maters: (1) Singapore Polytechnic (2) National University of Singapore My Primary Blog: <a href="http://teo-en-ming-aka-zhang-enming.blogspot.com">http://teo-en-ming-aka-zhang-enming.blogspot.com</a> My Secondary Blog: <a href="http://enmingteo.wordpress.com">http://enmingteo.wordpress.com</a> My Youtube videos: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/enmingteo">http://www.youtube.com/user/enmingteo</a> Email: <a href="mailto:space.time.universe@gmail.com">space.time.universe@gmail.com</a> Mobile Phone (Starhub Prepaid): +65-8369-2618 Street: Bedok Reservoir Road Country: Singapore