Rescuezilla 2.4 is here: Grab it before you need it

Version 2.4 of Rescuezilla - which describes itself as the "Swiss Army Knife of System Recovery," - is here and based on Ubuntu 22.04. Rescuezilla is a fork and continuation of the Redo Backup and Recovery project. "Redo" went quiet after 2012, with no new releases until 2020. So, in 2019, the developers behind Rescuezilla …

[Potemkine!]

Name and shame

typo-squatters' ransom

Who are they?

[Phones Sheridan]

I'm confused.

Any chance of a flow chart :)

[VoiceOfTruth]

NetBSD

-> although NetBSD is admittedly niche, we thought it might handle a BSD FFS volume

I don't have an installation to hand to test this, but I seem to recall that NetBSD uses the older UFS v1 (or just UFS) version of UFS. I am sure (fairly sure, willing to put £5 on it) that Linux does have support for this using the -o option.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: NetBSD

I tested a Linux Mint installation with a NetBSD formatted disk. It can mount it without problems:

# mount -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2 /dev/sdb1 /tmp/a

mount: /tmp/a: WARNING: device write-protected, mounted read-only.

# mount |grep sdb1

/dev/sdb1 on /tmp/a type ufs (ro,relatime,ufstype=ufs2,onerror=lock)

So I am surprised that Rescuezilla cannot handle it.

[karlkarl]

Re: NetBSD

UFS (sometimes called FFS) is not actually a standardized implementation.

For example OpenBSD's UFS and FreeBSD's UFS are different and incompatible. This is also quite a different UFS used in UnixWare.

Same with v2 unfortunately.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: NetBSD

Indeed I know that, hence the need for the ufstype= option.

My point was I was pretty sure from memory that Linux could mount NetBSD's implementation. Even though the others are incompatible, as you say, I have had some luck over the years mounting "foreign" versions read only.

[Liam Proven]

Re: NetBSD

I thought it would myself.

The point of the test was to just see if it would open it without extra tricks or configuration or instructions.

It didn't.

[Pete 2]

deedee

> images an entire drive to an image file

The original function of the dd command was to do exactly that.

From personal experience of other zero-cost solutions, the measure of their worth - or time wasting - is how they deal with bad blocks on the source disk.

[Liam Proven]

Re: deedee

That's a different question, but it's a valid point.

I have had great success with 2 different tools for dying disks: dd_rescue and gddrescue.

The snag with DDing a disk is that the result is a raw file, it copies everything including empty blocks, and you need a destination as big as the source.

Which is why tools like partclone and things exist: they understand the filesystems they are copying, so they only copy allocated blocks, which can be much quicker, and they can compress their output, meaning that modern PCs with terabyte-class disks, usually largely empty, don't need multi-terabyte storage to hold the output.

It's not _essential_ but it makes life easier.

Thus Clonezilla, which works but is hard, and in turn thus RedoRescue, but that was moribund for 6 years when Rescuezilla revived it.

[NickHolland]

Re: deedee

you lost me here...

RedoRescue and Rescuezilla -- do they just do block-image binary clones of the entire disk (like dd), or are they file-system aware?

i.e., I have a 500GB disk. There's 100GB of data on it, 400G of empty file system...if I clone the disk using RedoRescue or Rescuezilla or Clonezilla, for that matter -- is my image file 500GB or 100GB in size?

[Liam Proven]

Re: deedee

They use various tools, with various compression options, from quick-but-not-very-efficient to slow-but-highly-efficient.

Yes, they are FS aware. Yes, they can make bit-exact clones. No, they do not use `dd`.

Depending on the contents of your disk, your backup of 100GB of OS and apps might take 50GB. OTOH if it is mostly JPGs and MP3s, which are already compressed, it might take 95GB.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: deedee

dd_rescue should be an easily accessed menu option on things like this. I tried using clonezilla recently with a drive containing a couple of bad blocks. clonezilla's main UI method spent ages analysing things then failed. dd_rescue (which is on the clonezilla disk but needs to be used in the command line) just got on with it almost instantly and got me a bootable copy with all the required data intact.

[JimmyPage]

It's now based on Ubuntu rather than Debian

But isn't Ubuntu based in Debian ?

[Korev]

Re: It's now based on Ubuntu rather than Debian

That's what THEY want you to think...

[Sgt_Oddball]

Now there's a blast from the past....

In the WinXP days Hirens boot disk became a must have CD to keep in the desk draw (next to 3 micro USB cables of undetermined functionality, old bluetack, several bulldog clips and that proprietary cable for a device you've long since lost).

Saved a number of PC's from various issues and even viruses over the years, and it's good to see its been updated for modern windows.

Teacher icon, because every day is a school day.

[Glenturret Single Malt]

Re: Now there's a blast from the past....

I have seen this word "draw" several times in the past and have only just realised that it refers to what I would call a "drawer". As to how this came about, I have wondered if it is an misconceived correction of the mispronounced word "drawr" (like idear etc.).

[Blackjack]

[The release notes mention an issue with graphics drivers and there should be a version 2.4.1 that fixes this very soon – but saying that, The Reg FOSS desk encountered no problems with it either in a VM or on bare metal]

I will wait then, my video card doesn't play well with some Linux distributions like newer versions of Ubuntu.