Creating the volume structure manually

The following is a general procedure for recovering MD devices and logical volumes by using a Linux-based bootable media, and an example of such recovery. You can use a similar procedure in Linux.

To create the volume structure manually

  1. Boot the machine from a Linux-based bootable media.
  2. Click Acronis Backup. Then, click Run management console.
  3. On the toolbar, click Actions, and then click Start shell. Alternatively, you can press CTRL+ALT+F2.
  4. If necessary, examine the structure of volumes which are stored in the archive, by using the acrocmd utility. Also, you can use this utility to mount one or more of these volumes as if they were regular volumes (see "Mounting backup volumes" later in this topic).
  5. Create the volume structure according to that in the archive, by using the mdadm utility (for MD devices), the lvm utility (for logical volumes), or both.

    Note: Logical Volume Manager utilities such as pvcreate and vgcreate, which are normally available in Linux, are not included in the bootable media environment, so you need to use the lvm utility with a corresponding command. For example: lvm pvcreate, lvm vgcreate, and lvm lvcreate.

  6. If you previously mounted the backup by using the acrocmd utility, use this utility again to unmount the backup (see "Mounting backup volumes" later in this topic).
  7. Return to the management console by pressing ALT+F1.

    (Do not reboot the machine at this point. Otherwise, you will have to create the volume structure again.)

  8. Click Recover, then specify the path to the archive and any other required parameters, and then click OK.

Note: This procedure will not work if you connect to Acronis Backup Bootable Agent remotely, because the command shell is not available in this case.

Example

Suppose that you previously performed a disk-level backup of a machine with the following disk configuration:

The following picture illustrates this configuration.

Two pairs of SCSI hard disk drives form two MD devices (RAID 1), which in turn form an LVM volume

Do the following to recover data from this archive.

Step 1: Creating the volume structure

  1. Boot the machine from a Linux-based bootable media.
  2. In the management console, press CTRL+ALT+F2.
  3. Run the following commands to create the MD devices:

    mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sd[ab]
    mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sd[cd]

  4. Run the following commands to create the logical volume group:

    Caution: The pvcreate command destroys all data on the /dev/md0 and /dev/md1 devices.

    lvm pvcreate /dev/md0 /dev/md1
    lvm vgcreate my_volgroup /dev/md0 /dev/md1
    lvm vgdisplay

    The output of the lvm vgdisplay command will contain lines similar to the following:

    --- Volume group ---
    VG Name     my_volgroup
    ...
    VG Access   read/write
    VG Status   resizable
    ...
    VG Size     1.99 GB
    ...
    VG UUID     0qoQ4l-Vk7W-yDG3-uF1l-Q2AL-C0z0-vMeACu

  5. Run the following command to create the logical volume; in the -L parameter, specify the size given by VG Size:

    lvm lvcreate -L1.99G --name my_logvol my_volgroup

  6. Activate the volume group by running the following command:

    lvm vgchange -a y my_volgroup

  7. Press ALT+F1 to return to the management console.

Step 2: Starting the recovery

  1. In the management console, click Recover.
  2. In Archive, click Change and then specify the name of the archive.
  3. In Backup, click Change and then select the backup from which you want to recover data.
  4. In Data type, select Volumes.
  5. In Items to recover, select the check box next to my_volgroup-my_logvol.
  6. Under Where to recover, click Change, and then select the logical volume that you created in Step 1. Click the chevron buttons to expand the list of disks.
  7. Click OK to start the recovery.

For a complete list of commands and utilities that you can use in the bootable media environment, see List of commands and utilities available in Linux-based bootable media. For detailed descriptions of the acrocmd utility, see the Acronis Backup command-line reference.

Mounting backup volumes

You may want to mount a volume stored in a disk backup, for example, to view some files in it before starting the recovery.

To mount a backup volume

  1. Use the acrocmd list content command to list the disks and volumes that are stored in the backup. For example, the following command lists the content of the latest backup of the linux_machine archive:

    acrocmd list content --loc=\\server\backups --credentials=user,MyPassWd --arc=linux_machine

    The output will contain lines similar to the following:

    type: disk
    Num         Partition             Flags       Size        Type           GUID
    ----------  --------------------  ----------  ----------  -------------  --------
    Dyn1        my_volgroup-my_lo...              4 GB        Ext 3
    Dyn2        md0                               2.007 GB    Ext 2
    Disk 1      sda                               16 GB       DT_FIXED
    1-1         sda1                  Act,Pri     203.9 MB    Ext 2
    1-2         sda2                  Pri         11.72 GB    Reiser
    1-3         sda3                  Pri         1.004 GB    Linux swap
    Disk 2      sdb                               8 GB        DT_FIXED
    2-1         sdb1                  Pri         2.007 GB    Ext 2
    2-2         sdb2                  Pri         2.007 GB    None
    Disk 3      sdc                               1 GB        DT_FIXED
    Disk 4      sdd                               8 GB        DT_FIXED
    4-1         sdd1                  Pri         2.007 GB    Ext 2
    4-2         sdd2                  Pri         2.007 GB    None

  2. Use the acrocmd mount command, specifying the volume's name in the --volume parameter. For example:

    acrocmd mount --loc=\\server\backups --arc=linux_machine --mount_point=/mnt --volume=DYN1

    This command mounts the logical volume DYN1 on the mount point /mnt.

To unmount a backup volume