Well did you *see* the errors? if you just went tar xzfj .... those errors would shoot by so fast you'd never see them. Try piping the output through less or dumping the stdout/stderr into a file and see if they are there.

I will try on another PC although R4V5 is R4V5 right? why would a PC hardware change how a tarball is decoded?

Seems odd to me!

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

I directed output to a file and checked it for errors. Didn't see any.

Did you redirect stderr? if you only did stdout you'd still never see the error message

Try

#tar xvfz /tmp/mkCDrec_v0.8.5.tar.gz >error.txt 2>&1

I am going to try on another MythTV machine to see if the effects are local to that computer.

...

OK, tried it on the regular machine and the tar balls expanded normally. This means there is some sort of problem local to the first machine I tried.

Oh dear...

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Obviously, there is something wrong with the first machine I tried. What could be causing gzip or tar problems like that? All sorts of odd "out of space on device" and "file not found" etc. Those can't be right since there is plenty of space on the drive and it works on other machines. Also I replaced gzip and tar with "apt-get install tar gzip" and that did not fix the error. Very strange. I suspect there is some machine limit since the first machine is an old PC (P2 266). Still, since it successfully installed KnoppMyth and works, to me that says gzip and tar do work or the install would be totally hosed. I turned hdparm back to default parameters as well and that had no effect.

So I moved to another MythTV machine to continue testing. I noticed an error message about "root.old device not supported" or something like that. Maybe that is the problem?

BTW, the line should be

tail -f /myth/backup/mkcdrec/tmp/hda1._.log


Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Hi Dave,

Lets try another approach. Convert the rh9 rpm to deb and install it.

go to sf.net mkcdrec page and download mkcdrec*.rh9.rpm

#cd /myth/backup
#apt-get install alien

#alien -d mkcdrec*rh9.rpm
#dpkg -i mkcdrec*.deb


#updatedb
#locate mkcdrec

#cd /var/opt/mkcdrec



pick up the knoppmyth wiki instructions again at here

#make test

fails because no mformat

#apt-get install mtools
#make test

passes

edit the Config.sh file as described in the wiki page

I saw that error again and I had cut n' pasted it in to a response on this thread but the message got trashed by another IE window and lost it. I'll try again to post it. The message is about boot.old initrd not supported.

argh!!!

so far this seems to be working. I'll post more in another message with that error message more specifically this time.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

OK,
The initial run finished OK and created an CDRec.iso in the /myth/backup/mkcdrec_backup directory. Went back to the wiki instructions and cleared out all the files from /myth/backup leaving only the empty mkcdrec_backup directory.

#cd /var/opt/mkcdrec
#make clean
#make test

everything looks ok

#make

lots of stuff scrolls by and here is the error message which I think is the root problem.

Found device /dev/root.old mounted as /initrd with type ext2
ERROR:
Device /dev/root.old is not yet supported by mkCDrec!
Please mail me the details of /dev/root.old with major nr
Press [ENTER] to exit:

I pressed enter and let it go again. I'll post again if anything interesting. I may try out the iso I tranfered to see what it does but I am fairly sure that it will not work just like yours didn't.

The mkcdrec developer needs to know what is causing us all this grief so he/she can fix it in an new version. Are you in contact with the developer?

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Bootloader in use is UNKNOWN
Bootloader is still unknown: checking all local disks...
Check if disk /dev/hda contains a master boot record
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.hda not found. Create one
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.hda created.
Check if disk /dev/sda contains a master boot record
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.sda not found. Create one
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.sda created.
Bootloader in use is UNKNOWN
Bootloader is still unknown: checking all local disks...
Check if disk /dev/hda contains a master boot record
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.hda not found. Create one
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.hda created.
Check if disk /dev/sda contains a master boot record
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.sda not found. Create one
/var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc/recovery/mbr.sda created.
cp -dpR /etc/hotplug /var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc
cp -dpR /etc/hotplug.d /var/opt/mkcdrec/stage/etc
The base ramdisk has the following size (uncompressed):


one more suspicious error message. This makes sense if it can't parse the root.old initrd since that is where the mbr would reside.

hmmm.....

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

I don't think I'll be able to help debug it, as I backed up by other means and am now running R5A10 which doesn't leave /initrd mounted. I wonder if you were to umount it before running make if that would help?

I tried a new approach: Mondo Rescue

http://www.mondorescue.org/

there are debian install instructions on the website so I just did normal install.

I ran the command:

mondoarchive -OVi -d /myth/backup/mondo -gF -s 4200m -E /myth

I ran normally and generated an ISO in the /myth/backup/mondo directory. I have to test it yet.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

You make that sound simple. I've scanned the mondo web pages a time or two but not in depth. Is there a way to exclude files like mpg, avi, etc to keep the size of the backup down?

Dave,

Yeah, it was simple.

There is a way to exclude files. Just read the man page for examples. I used a "-E /myth" parameter to exclude all the /myth files. I suppose you could add more if you'd like. My whole MythTV box (not including data files) was only 800+ megs so I burned it to a DVD. I could have purged the deb cache and done some other stuff and probably fit it on a CD but was in a hurry.

Seems to work great. The DVDs boot the MythTV box and when I ran "compare" it checked out with only 18 files different. Those all looked pretty normal changes though since it had operated for a while since the backup DVD was made.

It seems to be exactly what I was looking for but I don't want to advertise it as a the "magic bullet" until I know more about what I am talking about. This is just an experiment until it demonstrates it actually can bring a dead MythTV box back to life.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Sounds excellent. I'll have to give that a try on my box. Thanks for posting as you went along.

Dave,
If this works out for you how about an update to the wiki to capture the "real meat" of this thread?

I'd love to see some sort of emergency backup & recovery feature built in to the KnoppMyth distro in general but I am not going to suggest it until the R5 furor dies down a bit. I can see the developers have their hands full now!

I am *much* more inclined to upgrade off of R4V5 if I have a clear line of safe retreat to the previous working baseline. WAF demands not losing all those christmas shows and "cooking with Rachael Ray" etc, etc!

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

I agree. The current wiki for mkcdrec should be depreciated in favor of a new one for mondo/mindi. For now I'll put a pointer to this thread over at the wiki.