Mondoarchive: Backup your OS before upgrading

Debian 6 'Squeeze' has had a great run, but Debian 7 'Wheezy' is coming and with it, newer software like KDE 4.8.  Awesome!

On my desktops I prefer to run Debian Testing to have a rolling set of updates to install and new software with it, but servers and some personal computers are better off without the frequent changes.  My wife's laptop has been running Debian 6 for software compatibility, but now that her software Promethean has a Debian 7 Wheezy version available, I figured it may be time to upgrade.

But first, we back up.

Enter MondoArchive and it's partner Mindi, which package up your system into nice bootable ISO files for reinstallation later.

Debian doesn't have all of the necessary packages for Mondo so we'll have to download these individually from Mondo's Debian 6 mirror.  Using 'wget' we'll download 7 packages for our i686 machine (32bit).  If you have a 64bit machine (i.e., amd64 aka x86-64) you should visit the mirror to get those files instead.

• shell$  mkdir mondo
• shell$  cd mondo
• shell$  sudo aptitude install dosfstools syslinux gawk parted buffer binutils bzip2 mtools genisoimage wodim cdtool screen libwww-perl libdate-manip-perl libfile-mimeinfo-perl gparted
• shell$  wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/afio_2.5-1_i386.deb
• shell$  wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/libprojectbuilder-perl_0.12.1-1_all.deb
• shell$  wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/mindi-busybox_1.18.5-2_i386.deb
• shell$  wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/mindi_2.1.4-1_i386.deb
• shell$   wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/mondo_3.0.2-1_i386.deb
• shell$  wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/project-builder_0.12.1-1_all.deb
• shell$  wget http://mondo.mirror.pclark.com/ftp/pub/mondorescue/debian/6.0/rpmbootstrap_0.12.1-1_all.deb
• shell$  ls
  afio_2.5-1_i386.deb                      mondo_3.0.2-1_i386.deb
  libprojectbuilder-perl_0.12.1-1_all.deb  project-builder_0.12.1-1_all.deb
  mindi_2.1.4-1_i386.deb                   rpmbootstrap_0.12.1-1_all.deb
  mindi-busybox_1.18.5-2_i386.deb
• shell$  sudo dpkg -i ./*

Ok, everything should be installed now!  If you have any errors about missing packages, please install those missing packages.

Two more steps: first, we'll link one of the tools that Mondo uses into a location it expects:

• shell$  sudo ln -s /usr/bin/genisoimage /usr/bin/mkisofs

The second step is just a suggestion, but if your PC is set to go to sleep after inactivity, you might want to disable powersaving for now.  Mondo may run for a few hours and we don't want to interrupt it.  Also, don't run this from a laptop battery; you wanna be plugged in for this disk- and cpu-intensive task.

We can now start MondoArchive. It's important to note that you'll need a lot of drive space to process the temporary files, and to create the ISOs, and (if you chose to store them on hard drive), to store those ISOs.  Plug in an external drive if that's what you need.

Also, since you're already backing up your /home/ directory daily or weekly anyways (right?!? to a separate drive, yes? I hope so!), you can  consider skipping the home directories, as well as some other locations as well to keep my reinstall disks small.  Note that this requires a pipe between locations!  This is a recent change in Mondo, if the excluded paths aren't being excluded — it's because we're not doing it correctly.

• /proc|/sys|/tmp|/var/tmp|/home

and additionally, if you I have Windows system mounted, I skip that Windows well:

• /proc|/sys|/tmp|/var/tmp|/home|/mnt/windows

If this is a server, you may skip the website and databases which you shoould be backing up in another way and whose data is too variable for these backups to be useful:

• /proc|/sys|/tmp|/var/tmp|/usr/vweb|/var/lib/mysql

You should be backing up these locations with other methods already.


Let's run this.  Start Mondo using 'sudo' or as root:

• shell$  sudo mondoarchive

So as not to interrupt the process by swapping DVDs all day, I choose to back up to Hard Drive:


I make my ISO files 4000 MB in size, to ensure they'll fit onto a DVD, which should be able to hold even more but I don't want to chance it.  I choose the default BZip2 with Maximum Compression, but you can do what you like.  I don't opt for the Windows NTFS partition backup since I have that backed up in other ways.  I skip the previous mentioned locations:



Mondo will suggest a Temporary and a Scratch directory; use the defaults if you have space on that location.  Accept the remaining option defaults such as 'extended attributes' and 'veryify backups' and 'are you running a sane kernel', and Mondo should start to do it's thing:

I don't know what the errors mean but I don't sweat 'em

After some time processing and scanning the drive Mondo should begin copying data for that first ISO file.  This whole process will take some time so go get uma bica.


My recent run, when I was correctly using the exclude pipes, ran about 45 mintutes and created a 3GB ISO file which I can use to reinstall my Debian OS if the upgrade doesn't work out.  Fortunately for me, I've not had a Debian OS-version-upgrade issue from which I couldn't recover (but I've never been successful with Kubuntu version upgrades).  I put that reinstall disk onto at least two hard drives, in case one of them fails.

And my upgrade to Debian 7 is ready to begin.


What's your experience?  Did Mondo solve your issues?  Did you have trouble installing or running Mondo? Have you successfully tested your Mondo disks?  Have you had to rely on Mondo after a failed drive or system?