Ubuntu bare metal restore steps ------------------------------- Author ------ Wybren Buijs To do a bare metal restore, boot some sort of live environment that is able to run burp. Also before you try a bare-metal restore be sure the backups are backups of the complete system and not just a part like /home. In our case we use a 15.10 ubuntu live image booted from the network or a usb drive. On the backup server You need to rename the keys because the live cd does not have these burp keys. On the server go to /etc/burp/CA/ and rename the keys of the host you are going to restore. Get the password the client used from /etc/burp/clientconfdir/clientname On the client. Boot your live environment. If burp is not installed install it. Edit /etc/burp/burp.conf Change the following items in the config: server = xx.xx.xx.xx (use the ip address to avoid resolving problems) password = get it from the backup server cname = get it from the backup server If it is a new disk/system. You first need to partition it in the right way. But before doing that you need to know a few things. What was the partition scheme? Was it gpt or mbr Was it a md raid system Do I want the same scheme as before? You could have a peek in /etc/fstab of your backup to find out if there was a md raid installed. You could use the size of your backup to determine the minimum partition space needed for the restore. You can set your swap with chroot. But I think it might be of good practice if you want to be able to do smooth bare-metal restores to make note how your systems should be partitioned. So let's start creating a system with all disk space available - swap. Start parted on the disk of choice and create 10GB primary partition and 2GB swap. Some parted info http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/09/parted-command-examples/ For gpt parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt mkpart boot 1049KB 10.5MB <- you need this for non uefi systems on uefi not sure if you have to. mkpart root 12MB 10GB mkpart swap 10GB 12GB set 1 bios_grub on print quit For mbr parted mkpart primary 1049KB 10GB mkpart extended 10GB 12GB mkpart logical 10GB 12GB set 1 boot on set 2 lba off print quit If your boot disk is a raid than you will need mdadm to create a new raid system. Mdadm is probably not installed so install it. Start parted on sda parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt mkpart boot 1049KB 2097KB mkpart root 2098KB 12GB mkpart swap 12GB 14GB set 1 bios_grub on set 2 raid on set 3 raid on Select sdb select /dev/sdb mklabel gpt mkpart boot 1049KB 2097KB mkpart root 2098KB 12GB mkpart swap 12GB 14GB set 1 bios_grub on set 2 raid on set 3 raid on quit Create your raids. mdadm --create /dev/md0 --bitmap=internal --level=1 -n 2 /dev/sd[ab]2 mdadm --create /dev/md1 --bitmap=internal --level=1 -n 2 /dev/sd[ab]3 create partitions on your raids. parted /dev/md0 mklabel loop select /dev/md1 mklabel loop quit For all the following commands if you use a raid use md0 and md1 instead of sda and sdb accept for installing grub. Create an ext4 file system mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 If you want you can already create your swap it can also be done when your system is restored and running. gpt-> mkswap /dev/sda3 mbr-> mkswap /dev/sda5 When done with the partitioning or your using a disk that was already partitioned, mount the partition of the os. In this case we mounted /dev/sda1 to /home/ubuntu/restore mkdir /home/ubuntu/restore sudo mount /dev/sda1 /home/ubuntu/restore Start the restore procedure add -f if you need to overwrite files sudo burp -a r -d /home/ubuntu/restore/ Once the restore is done you need to install grub to the boot drive to do this we chroot into the restore directory. If it is a new disk create the excluded proc dir. mkdir restore/proc Mount the critical virtual filesystems. Run the following as a single command: for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /home/ubuntu/restore$i; done If it complains about a missing folder in your restore folder like proc create it. Chroot into your restore system device: sudo chroot /home/ubuntu/restore If its a md raid first install mdadm apt-get install mdadm Install GRUB 2 (substitute the correct device with the device you used before): grub-install /dev/sda If the system partitions are on a software RAID install GRUB 2 on all disks in the RAID. Example (software RAID using /dev/sda and /dev/sdb): grub-install /dev/sda grub-install /dev/sdb Recreate the GRUB 2 menu file (grub.cfg) update-grub Exit chroot: CTRL-D on keyboard Reboot. sudo reboot If you did all of this on a new disk or system some things will be messed up. Your fstab will have wrong uuid's in it. You should match them with your current uuid's You might need to create a swap space. To check if you have a working swap free If all the numbers next to swap are 0 you have no swap When it was a raid system check what the current name of your raid is it can be quite different. cat /proc/mdstat Create and enable a swap mkswap /dev/sda5 swapon /dev/sda5 Correct the uuids in your fstab. Fist list your uuids. ls -la /dev/disk/by-uuid lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 22 17:08 e4e0f3f6-f774-46a0-a476-ea56a00dd4cf -> ../../sda5 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 22 17:08 f757c477-2c7f-4073-a6ae-6d53625c3573 -> ../../sda1 If you do not have 2 uuid's you probably did not do the mkswap step. Edit your fstab and change the uuid's for the correct ones vi /etc/fstab Info on installing grub https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing Info on creating a swap. https://www.centos.org/docs/rhel-sag-en-3/s1-swap-adding.html Info on creating mdraid. http://askubuntu.com/questions/505446/how-to-install-ubuntu-14-04-with-raid-1-using-desktop-installer