How to Clone/Backup Linux Systems Using – Mondo Rescue Disaster Recovery Tool

Mondo Rescue is an open source, free disaster recovery and backup utility that allows you to easily create a complete system (Linux or Windows) Clone/Backup ISO Images to CD, DVD, Tape, USB devices, Hard Disk, and NFS. And can be used to quickly restore or redeploy working images into other systems, in the event of data loss, you will be able to restore as much as the entire system data from backup media.

Mondo program is available freely for download and released under GPL (GNU Public License) and has been tested on a large number of Linux distributions.

This article describes Mondo installation and usage of Mondo Tools to backup up your entire system. The Mondo Rescue is a Disaster Recovery and Backup Solution for System Administrators to take a full backup of their Linux and Windows file system partitions into CD/DVD, Tape, and NFS and restore them with the help of the Mondo Restore media feature that uses at boot-time.

Installing MondoRescue on RHEL / CentOS / Scientific Linux

The latest Mondo Rescue packages (the current version of Mondo is 3.0.3-1) can be obtained from the “MondoRescue Repository“. Use the “wget” command to download and add a repository under your system. The Mondo repository will install suitable binary software packages such as afio, buffer, mindi, mindi-busybox, mondo, and mondo-doc for your distribution if available.

For RHEL/CentOS/SL 6,5,4 – 32-Bit

Download the MondoRescue repository under “/etc/yum.repos.d/” as file name “mondorescue.repo“. Please download the correct repository for your Linux OS distribution version.

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 6 - 32-Bit ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/6/i386/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 5 - 32-Bit ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/5/i386/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 4 - 32-Bit ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/i386/mondorescue.repo

For RHEL/CentOS/SL 6,5,4 – 64-Bit

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 6 - 64-Bit ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/6/x86_64/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 5 - 64-Bit ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/5/x86_64/mondorescue.repo

## On RHEL/CentOS/SL 4 - 64-Bit ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/rhel/4/x86_64/mondorescue.repo

Once you successfully added the repository, do “yum” to install the latest Mondo tool.

# yum install mondo

Installing MondoRescue on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Debian users can do “wget” to grab the MondoRescue repository for Debian 6 and 5 distributions. Run the following command to add “mondorescue.sources.list” to the “/etc/apt/sources.list” file to install Mondo packages.

On Debian

## On Debian 6 ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/debian/6/mondorescue.sources.list
# sh -c "cat mondorescue.sources.list >> /etc/apt/sources.list" 
# apt-get update 
# apt-get install mondo
## On Debian 5 ##
# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/debian/5/mondorescue.sources.list
# sh -c "cat mondorescue.sources.list >> /etc/apt/sources.list" 
# apt-get update 
# apt-get install mondo

On Ubuntu/Linux Mint

To install Mondo Rescue in Ubuntu 12.10, 12.04, 11.10, 11.04, 10.10, and 10.04 or Linux Mint 13, open the terminal and add the MondoRescue repository in the “/etc/apt/sources.list” file. Run the following commands to install Mondo Rescue packages.

# wget ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/ubuntu/`lsb_release -r|awk '{print $2}'`/mondorescue.sources.list
# sh -c "cat mondorescue.sources.list >> /etc/apt/sources.list" 
# apt-get update 
# apt-get install mondo

Creating Cloning or Backup ISO Image of System/Server

After installing Mondo, Run the “mondoarchive” command as the “root” user. Then follow the screenshots that show how to create an ISO-based backup media of your full system.

# mondoarchive

Welcome to Mondo Rescue

Mondo Rescue Welcome Screen
Mondo Rescue Welcome Screen

Please enter the full path name to the directory for your ISO Images. For example: /mnt/backup/

Mondo Rescue Storage Directory
Mondo Rescue Storage Directory

Select the Type of compression. For example, bzip, gzip, or lzo.

Select Type of Compression
Select the Type of Compression

Select the maximum compression option.

Mondo Rescue Compression Speed
Select Compression Speed

Please enter how large you want each ISO image in MB (Megabytes). This should be less than or equal to the size of the CD-R(W)’s (i.e. 700) and for DVDs (i.e. 4480).

Mondo Rescue ISO Size
Define Mondo Rescue ISO Size

Please give the name of your ISO image filename. For example: tecmint1 to obtain tecmint-[1-9]*.iso files.

Mondo Rescue Prefix
Enter the Name of Mondo Rescue

Please add the filesystems to the backup (separated by “|“). The default filesystem is “/” which means full backup.

Mondo Rescue Backup Paths
Enter Backup Paths

Please exclude the filesystem that you don’t want to back up (separated by “|“). For example “/tmp” and “/proc” are permanently excluded or if you wish to fully backup your system, just hit enter.

Mondo Rescue Exclude Paths
Enter Exclude File System

Please enter your temporary directory path or select the default one.

Mondo Rescue Temporary Directory
Enter Temporary Directory Name

Please enter your scratch directory path or select the default one.

Mondo Rescue Scratch Directory Name
Enter Scratch Directory Name

If you would like to backup extended attributes. Just hit “enter“.

Mondo Rescue Extended Backup
Enter Extended Backup Attributes

If you want to Verify your backup after mondo has created them. Click “Yes“.

Mondo Rescue Verify Backups
Verify Backups

If you’re using a stable standalone Linux Kernel, click “Yes” or if you using another Kernel say “Gentoo” or “Debian” and hit “No“.

Mondo Rescue Kernel
Select Stable Linux Kernel

Click “Yes” to proceed further.

Mondo Rescue Backup Process
Proceed Cloning Process

Creating a catalog of “/” filesystem.

Mondo Rescue Making Catalog
Creating a Catalog for File System

Dividing filelist into sets.

Mondo Rescue Dividing File List
Dividing File List

Calling MINDI to create boot+data disk.

Mondo Rescue Boot Data Disk
Creating Boot Data Disk

Backing up filesystem. It may take a couple of hours, please be patient.

Mondo Rescue Backup Filesystem
Backing up File System

Backing up big files.

Mondo Rescue Big Files Backup
Big Files Backup

Running “mkisofs” to make ISO Image.

Mondo Rescue Creating ISO
Making ISO Image

Verifying ISO Image tarballs.

Mondo Rescue Verify ISO
Verify ISO

Verifying ISO Image Big files.

Mondo Rescue Verify Big Files
Verify Big Files

Finally, Mondo Archive has been completed. Please hit “Enter” and go back to the shell prompt.

Mondo Rescue Backup Completed
Backup Completed

If you’ve selected the default backup path, you will see an ISO image under “/var/cache/mondo/“, that you can be burnt into a CD/DVD for later restore.

To restore all files automatically, boot the system with Mondo ISO Image, and at the boot prompt type “nuke” to restore files.

For other distributions, you can also grab Mondo Rescue packages at the mondorescue download page.

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Ravi Saive
I am an experienced GNU/Linux expert and a full-stack software developer with over a decade in the field of Linux and Open Source technologies

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