Kickstart

[kovax]

Kickstart is similar to jumstart correct?
Here is what I would like to do:
I have a server that was built and configured by someone else. I have been tasked with this server (maintaining and backups). I would like to somehow create an image of the server in its current configuration just incase i blow something up while i am now in control of the server.
If Kickstart is not the answer could you let me know the best way to tackle this?

Thanks to all!!!

[kovax]

I would also like to be able to take whatever image that is able to be pulled off the system and push it to another somewhat similar server.

Thanks!!

[Void Main]

If you are referring to Red Hat's kickstart and Sun's jumpstart then yes, they perform basically the same task of automating the installation. I don't believe this is what you want though. Kickstart and jumpstart are for automating intallations when you have to install on many systems that don't necessarily have the same hardware.

Although you can do it I don't believe it's all that common to create images of servers. Usually you back the system up with utilities such as "tar" or with more robust backup solutions, both of which perform file system level backups. If you do wish to perform image backups there is a nice utility called "partimage" that can do this:

http://www.partimage.org/

I don't believe partimage supports LVM at the moment though so if you have logical volumes (and maybe even if you don't) you might want to try:

http://www.mondorescue.org/

I have heard Mondo works well, I have never personally used it. Otherwise go with normal file system based backups to tape. The nice thing about file system backups is you can do incremental backups on a live system where you'll surely have to umount your file systems to do a proper image backup (which also means bringing your system down for the root file system, not something you usually want to do on a server).

If you are not that familiar with Linux then the most important piece of advice I can give you is to have a test system in which you perform all the tasks on first to get familiar with what you need to do before you perform the task on the production server. Take an old desktop so you can rip it up. It would be good practice (and fun) to kill it and bring it back to life.

There is a lot of information out there on the net. I don't really want to recommend any one method. You have to decide what is best for you depending on your needs. I actually use several different backup techniques. At work we use expensive commercial software that performs the backups over the network to large robotic tape libraries. I have some personal machines at a provider where I backup a few machines using a free/open backup server called Amanda to a tape library:

http://www.amanda.org/

At home I just wrote a simple scripts to incrementally archive my important data on my machines and copy it to a another machine. I also use rsync in certain situations (duplicate data between primary and backup servers). You have a lot of options.