Does restoring from backups actually work?
I have Linode's backup service running. I took a manual snapshot before doing some reconfigurations to be extra sure. The reconfig of the machine caused some problems so I went to revert back. Restore to the same Linode, overwrite existing, big mistake. The restore failed and now my Linode won't boot.
I have tried this with both my manual snapshots and the automated ones. What's the use in backing up if you can't restore?
3 Replies
This is the way I usually do this:
I don't allocate ALL my available disc space to disc images. If you've done this, you have lots of allocated disc space you are not using.
Restore a backup to a different disc image (I always delete the swap image that gets restored…you don't need it).
If I've done serious damage, I reboot the Linode from the restored backup. This puts your running Linode back to the state it was in when the backup was taken. Once I determine everything is ok, I delete the damaged disc, rename the restored disc appropriately and run with the restored disc.
If I've only deleted a few files, I mount the restored disc to /mnt and copy the deleted files back onto my Linode's disc. Reboot as necessary. Once everything is ok, I delete the restored backup.
I can have two restored disc images online at any one time. I have 4Gb, 2-core, 80Gb disc Linode.
Hope this helps…
-- sw
P.S. I also have a cron(1) job that uses the Linode API to take a snapshot of my Linode every Sunday. I can post it here if anyone is interested.
If the restore job failed, contact support. They can recover the disk images that were deleted as part of the restore. If the restore is no good because something still doesn't work (as you said, your Linode doesn't boot), it would be helpful if you were more specific about the failure. Lish is very helpful for debugging boot issues, as is Rescue Mode.
