How to Backup and Restore MBR within Logical Volumes?

[Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming)]

> Maybe I didn't really understand your setup, but... isn't your mbr simply
on /dev/loop1?

Yes, you are right.

root at sysresccd /mnt/hitachi/test % fdisk -l /dev/loop1

Disk /dev/loop1: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2b362b35

      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/loop1p1   *           1        6526    52420063+   7  HPFS/NTFS

I am so used with device nomenclature of harddisks being /dev/hda, /dev/hdb,
/dev/sda, /dev/md0, /dev/xvda, etc that it didn't occur to me that the
device node of my virtual machine in a logical volume is very simply
/dev/loop1 after I have performed the "losetup /dev/loop1
/dev/volumegroup/logicalvolume" step.

Thank you very much for enlightening me! Now I can proceed with writing the
backup and restore script for my Fedora 11 Dom0 (all partitions using LVM2
logical volumes) and all of my Xen virtual machines (contained in logical
volumes).

-- 
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: http://teo-en-ming-aka-zhang-enming.blogspot.com
My Secondary Blog: http://enmingteo.wordpress.com
My Youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/enmingteo
Email: space.time.universe at gmail.com
Mobile Phone (Starhub Prepaid): +65-8369-2618
Street: Bedok Reservoir Road
Country: Singapore

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Roberto Ragusa <mail at robertoragusa.it>wrote:

> Mr. Teo En Ming (Zhang Enming) wrote:
>
> > # kpartx -av /dev/loop1
> [...]
> > But the problem is that I can only backup/clone the filesystems of my
> > virtual machine within a logical volume. I can't backup the Master Boot
> > Record (MBR) of the virtual machine within a logical volume. For example,
> >
> > dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.hda bs=512 count=1
> >
> > Because /dev/hda resides in a logical volume. The logical volume is a
> > virtual harddisk for my virtual machine.
>
> Maybe I didn't really understand your setup, but... isn't your mbr
> simply on /dev/loop1?
>
> --
>   Roberto Ragusa    mail at robertoragusa.it
>
> --
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