Support What should you do if you are having a problem with Mondo and want free technical support? Before you seek free technical support, would you please:- Read the manual Make sure you are using the latest versions of Mondo/Mindi if that doesn't help then try the latest snapshots from the Download page - SNAPSHOTS HAVE DATES - e.g. 20031031 - IN THEIR FILENAMES Read your own logfile (mondoarchive.log, mondorestore.log or mindi.log) Try Mindi's failsafe kernel, if yours doesn't work (i.e. say 'no' when asked if you want to use your own kernel, or include the switch '-k FAILSAFE' in your call to Mondo); if this fails, you really ought to fix your hardware and/or your kernel :) Look on the Bugzilla page to see if the bug has already been registered with us Are you a 64-bit Mondo user? There is now a mailing list just for you. Bruno Cornec of HP is spearheading the porting of Mondo to 64-bit platforms. Sign up and join in the fun! The Mondo Rescue mailing list (see below) (mirrored to news://news.gmane.org) is a valuable resource for all users. There is also the new, PHP-based forum at http://forum.mondorescue.org/ (thanks, Rhys). There is #mondo on irc.freenode.net, a chat room frequented by many members of the Mondo Illuminati and other users. Finally, there is the Bugzilla bug registry at http://geek.j2solutions.net/bugzilla/ which is the best place to register bugs. If in doubt, register the bug and e-mail your logs to the mailing list and leave a comment in the forum. That way, you are sure to get someone's attention. To write to the Mondo mailing list, go to the link below:- http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mondo-devel No logs? No help. We can't fix the problem if we don't know anything about your computer system. To e-mail the list after joining, e-mail mondo-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Known bugs in Mondo 1.6x Grub sometimes fails to install properly on RAID systems. This is caused by a bug in your copy of 'grub-install', which comes with your copy of the 'grub' package. To work around the problem, please boot into Interactive Mode; at the screen asking if you want to install your boot sector, please use the <Alt>-cursor keys to move to another terminal, where you should type 'chroot /mnt/RESTORING' followed by the magical incantation to install Grub; finally, type exit and return to the mondorestore screen where you should continue to answer the on-screen questions. On Mandrake 9.1, if you have an LVM-on-software-RAID filesystem setup, you might have problems with Nuke Mode. The LVM volumes might fail to be created. The solution is to boot into Interactive Mode and increase (I just double) the size of /dev/md0, which you usually do by doubling the size of each of its constituent partitions. Then save the list and say 'yes' to partitioning, formatting, restoring all files, etc. but say 'no' when asked if you have edited the mountlist. This bug has been fixed in 1.7x :-) Known bugs in Mondo 1.7x Grub sometimes fails to install properly on RAID systems. This is caused by a bug in your copy of 'grub-install', which comes with your copy of the 'grub' package. See #1 of 1.6x for more info. Your DVD drive might go into some kind of reset loop after writing to DVD-RW disks w/ Mondo. This does not happen with DVD-R disks, which leads me to believe there may be a bug in dvd+rw-format. Vi is missing from Mindi 0.9x's busybox binary. However, Joshua Oreman recently added nano. If you restore an NTFS partition 'live' (without booting from CD/DVD/floppies), Mondo might freeze midway through the restoration. This is due to the funky nature of partimagehack. The workaround is to boot from CD/DVD/floppies and restore the partition from there. If /dev/md0 is your boot device and GRUB is your boot loader then mondorestore might fail to install the boot loader. The workaround is to do it manually. I am working on all these bugs, in addition to carrying out my other duties. Tape users
User | Tape streamer | Does it work?
Stan "Troff" Benoit | Python SCSI DDS-2 | yes
Stan "Troff" Benoit | Python SCSI DDS-3 | yes
Stan "Troff" Benoit | IDE Colorado/Travan | yes
Maurice J. | HP DAT8i DDS-2 | yes
Maurice J. | HP DDS4 DAT40i | yes, after upgrading tape's firmware
Andy G. | Sun (SCSI?) DDS-3 | yes
Hugo Rabson | IDE Travan 8GB | yes
Hugo Rabson | IDE Travan 8GB | yes
Hugo Rabson | IDE OnStream DI-20/ADR | mondo v1.7x only
Hugo Rabson (thanks to Michael Clark for lending me the drive) | IDE OnStream DI-30/ADR2 | mondo v1.7x only
Jeffrey S. | HP SCSI DDS-3 | yes if you run 'mt /dev/st0 setblk 32' or 'mt defblksize 32' first
Linux distributions Mondo and Mindi are now included in Mandrake, Gentoo, Sorceror, Debian, Knoppix, and soon ArkLinux. Mondo tries to work around the many eccentricities of the 100+ distributions out there. If you would like to work with me to overcome the eccentricities of your distribution, please e-mail your log file to the mailing list.
Linux Distribution | Mondo/Mindi versions tested | Backup experience | Restore experience
ClarkConnect | ? | Go here | Go here
Debian 3.0 | 1.7x / 0.9x | OK | OK
e-Smith/SME 5.x | 1.7x / 0.9x | OK | OK
Gentoo 1.4 | 1.6x / 0.8x | Varies. See Mark's page | Varies. See Mark's page
Mandrake 8.x | 1.6x / 0.8x | OK | OK
Mandrake 9.x | 1.6x / 0.8x | OK | OK
Red Hat 6.x | 1.6x / 0.8x | use the failsafe kernel and other special packages | OK
Red Hat 7.0 | 1.6x / 0.8x | use the failsafe kernel and other special packages | OK
Red Hat 7.1 thru 9 | 1..6x / 0.8x | OK | OK
Slackware 8.0 | 1.07 / 0.33 | OK | OK
SuSE 8.2 | 1.6x / 0.8x 1.7x / 0.9x | works well works better | see Mike Roark's page
Trustix 2.0 | 1.7x / 0.9x | OK | OK
## ClarkConnect Please go to http://www.contribs.org/contribs/thaynes/beta/ClarkConnect1.2/mondorescue/ for more info. ## Debian 3.0 I have not yet managed to automate the rolling of nightly DEBs. In the meantime, the excellent Héctor García Álvarez has rolled some DEB's for Debian users. Please go here for the Mondo or Mindi DEB files. It is sad that I used to badmouth Debian's distro for its long list of eccentricities. While it is true that Debian is different from other distros in many ways - some large, some small - recent releases are much improved in terms of interoperability with other Linux distros. For example, Debian 3.0's 2.4.18 kernel (available on CD#5 of the Debian installation CD set) is compatible with Mondo's kernel. This is a tremendous achievement on the part of the Debian team, for which much kudos is due. The occasional problem will still arise. Also, One user reports, "It appears that the 'testing' package of Lilo that I was running was missing boot.b files. I suppose there is an outside chance that the boot.b files weren't carried over from the last installation. Anyway, I've seen a bug report at packages.debian.org about the lilo package in question not including boot.b files that it normally should include. [...] Debian lilo package that came with the install CDs for Debian 3.0 r0 worked. Debian lilo "testing" package 22.2-3 had this missing boot.b file problem. Debian lilo package 22.3.3-2 worked fine." ## e-Smith 5.x I backed up and restored SME5. Thanks go to Gene Cooper for mailing me the SMS CD (and several others, all of which are proving very useful). SLES - an off-shoot of e-Smith [?] - was backed up and restored correctly by Herman Knief recently. See Tom Haynes' HOWTO as well. I recently backed up and nuke-restored an e-Smith 5.6 machine w/ Mondo 1.7x and Mindi 0.9x; I had no trouble at all. ## Gentoo 1.x Mark Newman has put up a web page dedicated to helping Gentoo users use Mondo. It looks as if Mondo works OK on Gentoo but there are still some eccentricities to be ironed out. As soon as someone finds a full-featured Gentoo distro on CD (one which doesn't require me to stay online for 3 days downloading source code), I'll install Gentoo on a PC and hack some code. BTW, Pazzop points out that the lock-breaking patch to the Linux kernel can cause Mindi to freeze. ## Mandrake 8.x Please make sure your PATH environmental variable includes /usr/local/sbin and /usr/local/bin. If necessary, type export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH before you call mondoarchive. "You might want to mention under under the Mandrake notes to run the programs with msec=2 or less. At levels 3,4,&5 issue.net gets replaced with issue.net.msec. Most server installs are going to run at msec=3 or higher." - Bill Dunlap ## Mandrake 9.x I backed up and nuke-restored Mandrake 8.2 and 9.1 on 9/22/03 with no problems. However, on 10/23/03, I tried to backup and restore a system running on a set of LVM-on-RAID partitions. I did encounter a problem. For some reason, the RAID partition was not large enough for the LVM logical drives. So, I edited the mountlist in Interactive Mode to double the size of each partition to be combined into the software RAID device. In other words, I increased the logical size of /dev/md0. Then I went through the rest of the interactive restore process - restoring all files, installing master boot record, etc. - and everything went fine. When I rebooted, everything came up OK. ## Red Hat 6.x I recently tried Mondo on Red Hat 6.0 for fun. What fun it was! Despite being almost five years old, RH6 is a great distro. If you want to run Mondo on it, here's how:- Download the Mondo Install CD. Burn it to a physical CD-R or CD-RW disk. Sit down next to your Red Hat 6.0 system. Make sure you have configured your CD writer. If you have not, you might have to do something like this:- Edit /etc/lilo.conf; add append="hdb=ide-scsi" (or similar) to make sure your CD writer is treated as a SCSI device in future. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local; add insmod ide-scsi at its end; save the modified file. Type ln -sf /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom and then reboot your PC. Type mount /mnt/cdrom ; /mnt/cdrom/setup to install the software. When asked if you want the stable or the development branch, please press S followed by the Enter key. The Mondo Install CD will install the missing packages. Type umount /mnt/cdrom and then remove the CD from the drive. To backup to CDs, type mondoarchive -k FAILSAFE -o -OVFg -c 8 If you want to backup to another storage format, e.g. tape, please vary the command-line call accordingly. However, you must include -k FAILSAFE -o in your call to mondoarchive. I have not yet managed to make isolinux play nicely with Red Hat 6.0, which is why you must use LILO instead (hence the '-o' switch). Also, Red Hat 6.0's kernel is not compatible with Mindi, so you must use Mondo's failsafe kernel ('-k FAILSAFE'). This kernel will not support any fancy hardware but it works fine for most purposes. Even if the failsafe kernel does not boot properly on your hardware, all is not lost. In an emergency, simply reinstall the OS, install Mondo on the PC, and then restore selectively from your backups. The convenience of bare-metal restore would of course be lost in that eventuality but your archives would still be available and useful. I plan to add Red Hat 6.2 to the mix in the next few days. ## Red Hat 7.0 Type insmod ide-scsi hdb or similar to get your CD writer working. Mount your Mondo Install CD in your CD-ROM drive. Run the installer script - mnt/cdrom/setup - and watch the show. Press Enter. Unmount the drive. Run mondoarchive as per the manual (see 'man mondoarchive' for more info). Use the failsafe kernel! Your stock 2.2.16 kernel is probably not compatible with Mondo, which does not officially support the 2.2 kernel series. ## Red Hat 7.1 thru 9 Mondo v1.16 and Mindi v0.42 work just fine with the default Red Hat 7.1 kernel and tools. You must first install afio, of course. All Mondo/Mindi versions through v1.7x/0.9x work fine with pretty much all Red Hat versions and variations from 7.2 onwards. "Following my earlier troubles on RH7.3 BETA, I can now report that Mondo has just worked flawlessly on proper Red Hat 7.3 with a custom kernel 2.4.19-pre8-ac2! I performed a full archive and booted from CD#1 to do a 'compare', which passed without any apparent problems." - Alastair Stevens Look at it this way. Red Hat has some hellacious QA procedures, so even if you don't like what they're doing with KDE and GNOME, you have to admit that they try very, very hard to release a stable, sane Linux distribution which adheres to the few de facto and formal standards which exist in the Linux world. ## Slackware 8.0 "I am using Slackware8/kernel 2.4.6/reiserfs and was able to do a complete backup and restore using mondo-1.07/mindi-0.33. After starting mondo-archive i got a friendly msg that my Slackware needed afio and lilo.conf. (i use grub) before it could continue. After a quick install of afio and editing my /etc/lilo.conf, i reran mondo-archive and all went well, it burned my backup CD and after rebooting the CD i was back up and running Slackware 8 . Works great!" Mike Polniak <mikpolniak at adelphia dot net> Interesting note, Newt won't build without the file: /usr/include/popt.h which is part of the RPM package. It's not something that you would normally install on a minimal Slackware system, but it was needed. That might save someone some hunting in the future. - Andy Glass ## SuSE SuSE 8.2 is supported. SuSE 9.0 will be soon. NEW - check out Mike's page for SuSE users! It's groovy. ## Trustix 2.0 I backed up and nuke-restored a Trustix 2.0 system w/ Mondo 1.7x and Mindi 0.9x on 9/22/03 without any problems. ## TurboLinux 6.0.1 No news yet.