Restore from Dump on tape

[Charles Steinkuehler]

> Unfortunately I am having to restore a production server.  I have a
recent
> backup that was a dump level 0 to a tape drive.  We have reinstalled
redhat
> 7.2 that was on there before the crash.  Can I just move to / and
issue
> 'restore -if /dev/nst0 ???
>
> What about open files?  Can I just overwrite everything, reboot and
the
> server should be restored?
>
> It's going to be a long night...thanks for the help.

I usually like to do this from a rescue floppy (such as tomsrtbt,
although I do things the hard way and use LEAF/LRP).

With a RH 7.2 system, I'd just boot into rescue mode on the CD.  You'll
get a command prompt, root *NOT* on any of your hard-drives, and your
previous install mounted for you (assuming file-systems didn't get too
wacked by whatever blew up your production server).  If you're not using
any wierd drivers, you should get full HDD and network access provided
by the same hardware auto-detect routines that did your initial install.

Once in the recovery prompt, you can fix RAID partitions, restore from
tape, or whatever...there's pretty much a full suite of tools available.

Oh...the business-card sized rescue CD's frequently given out as
"freebies" work well too, but with a RH system, I'd personally stick
with the RH rescue disk.  Just type "linux rescue" at the boot prompt.
More info in the RH manuals:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.2-Manual/custom-guide/res
cuemode.html

Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net