[ReaR-announce] ReaR 1.9 with migration feature

[Announcements regarding Relax & Recover]

Hi,

I integrated the migration feature ("P2V patch") from Heinlein Support into
trunk today, the old codebase is now available under branches/1.7 (and will
hopefully be removed soon). The migration feature allows ReaR to reconfigure the
Linux as part of the disaster recovery procedure (see CHANGES below).

Since this constitutes a major change I call upon all ReaR users to give it a
try and supply us with feedback. ATM it might very well be that not all
previously supported Linux distributions and versions work well.

The next objectives are the following (and IMHO in this order):
- get ReaR to work as before on all platforms that where already working well
- get migrate to work on all platforms (the code has been developed on SLES10
and has seen only limited testing elsewhere)
- add more documentation about the migrate feature and its limitations
- fill in the missing features in the migrate code:
  - resizing of hard disks and reorganizing the mount points differently
  - handle more exotic configurations (e.g. complex network and disk setups)

As soon as I get some positive reports I will also release a proper release with
RPM/DEB packages etc. Till then please checkout the latest from
https://rear.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/rear/trunk and use
usr/share/rear/contrib/svn2host to push it to your test system.

Please use the rear-users mailing list for discussions and questions about the
new features and submit patches through our sourceforge.net patch tracker.

BTW, udev will help a lot with features like local backup onto a bootable USB
media and other stuff that has been requested.

Usage info: Simply use ReaR as usual. Upon recovery on different hardware, ReaR
will prompt you to specify the replacement mappings for NICs and disks and
recover the system as usual. After the recovery ReaR will automatically adjust
the recovered system to match the new hardware.

Thank you for your patience,
Schlomo Schapiro

PS: CHANGES:
Version 1.9.0  - not released
---------------------------
* Merged P2V patch from Heinlein Support with the following included changes:
  * Migrate disk and network configuration if HW changed
  * Adjust drivers and initrd/initramfs
  * Adjust swap space with by-id mounting (only swap ATM)
  * Read mapping files in /etc/rear/mapping with answers instead of asking
during recovery
  * Run PRE_RECOVERY_SCRIPT and POST_RECOVERY_SCRIPT scripts as a hook for
user-supplied stuff
  * Changed the rescue system startup code to be a directory of shell snippets
(/etc/scripts/system-setup.d)
  * recreate some FS attributes for ext*
  * recreate vfat
* added several if have_udev to make it work again on older 2.6 Linux
* fix symlink loop on Fedora & clones
* make all Fedora derivates symlink to Fedora
* support Scientific Linux, yet another RHEL clone
* set LOGFILE before loading lib/*sh functions, makes rear -d work again
* new shell workflow, allows one to enter into ReaR internals and try out stuff

* * * PLEASE NOTE ! THIS IS THE FIRST RELEASE WITH THE NEW P2V CODE * * *
* * * PLEASE EXPECT BUGS, GLITCHES AND GENERAL DATA LOSS !!! * * *

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