This document contains the release notes for the open source project Relax-and-Recover.
This document is distributed with the following license: “Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0)”. To read the license deed, go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
Relax-and-Recover is a GNU/Linux system administrator tool and framework used to create bootable disaster recovery images which makes bare metal disaster recovery (including backup restore) easier. System administrators use the Relax-and-Recover framework to set up a disaster recovery procedure as part of their disaster recovery policy (which does not replace in any way a backup policy). Relax-and-Recover does not implement backup but complements it because backup (and restore) happens via external backup software that is only called by Relax-and-Recover.
The following features are supported by the most recent releases of Relax-and-Recover. Anything labeled as (New) was added as the most recent release. New functionality for previous releases can be seen in the next chapter that details each release.
The most recent release of Relax-and-Recover is supported on most GNU/Linux based systems with kernel 2.6 or higher. It provides the following functionality:
Hot maintenance capability. A recovery/rescue image can be made online while the system is running
Command line interface. Relax-and-Recover does not require a graphical interface to run, neither in creation mode, nor in recovery mode (console is enough)
Support included for most common file systems, such as ext2, ext3, and ext4. Other filesystems like reiserfs, jfs, xfs, and btrfs are also implemented, but are less tested. (Feedback is appreciated)
Selected Hardware RAID and (eg. HP SmartArray) and mirroring solutions (eg. DRBD) are supported
NVME and mmcblk disks are supported
LVM root volumes are supported
Multipath support for SAN storage
UEFI support (including UEFI USB booting)
Integrates with internal backup programs such as:
Integrates with external backup solutions such as:
Integrates with Disaster Recovery Linux Manager (DRLM)
Udev support (except for some really ancient udev versions) which is the base for many important features:
Systemd support for the more recent Linux distributions
System migration and reconfiguration (‘MIGRATION_MODE’)
Support backup software: Bacula, both locally attached tapes (with bextract) and network-based backups. Also, in combination with OBDR tapes.
Create OBDR tapes with method mkbackup and put the backup onto the tape
to have a single-tape bootable recovery solution
Label the OBDR tape with the method format to avoid accidental
overwrites with OBDR
Create bootable disk (eSATA, USB …) medium with the backup included:
BACKUP_URL=usb:///dev/device
Together with OUTPUT=USB we have a complete solution on hard disks
(booting of it and restoring data).
DHCP client support (IPv4 and IPv6). Dhcp client activation
can be forced via the variable USE_DHCLIENT=yes (define in /etc/rear/local.conf).
It is also possible to force DHCP at boot time with kernel option dhcp
USE_STATIC_NETWORKING=y, will cause statically configured network settings to be applied even when USE_DHCLIENT is in effect
Save layout and compare layouts for automation of making Relax-and-Recover snapshots (checklayout option)
External USB booting uses extlinux (instead of syslinux), and therefore, the USB disk must first be formatted with an ext2, ext3, ext4 or btrfs based file system
VLAN tagging, teaming and bridge support
Add timestamp of ReaR run with rc code to the syslog or messages file; sending mail report is also possible
The possibility to backup any partition (in particular a Windows partition) via the BACKUP type BLOCKCLONE
Unattended ReaR recovery has been improved
Improved security model related to SSH keys (New)
NOTE: Features marked Experimental are prone to change with future releases.
The first release of Relax-and-Recover, version 1.0, was posted to the web in July 2006. For each release, this chapter lists the new features and defect fixes. All releases are cumulative. Unless otherwise noted all releases of Relax-and-Recover are intended to work backward compatible with previous versions. In addition to the GPL disclaimer of warranty and liability there is no guarantee that things work backward compatible. In general the older the system is the less likely it is that a newer Relax-and-Recover version works. For each Relax-and-Recover version upgrade and for each change of a software that is used by Relax-and-Recover and for each change of your basic system you must re-validate that your disaster recovery procedure still works for you.
The references pointing to fix #nr or issue #nr refer to our issues tracker.
New features, bigger enhancements, and possibly backward incompatible changes:
Enhancements to better support mmcblk/eMMC disks: An “eMMC” device could be not only one single disk but actually consist of several ‘disk’ type block devices for example the actually usable disk /dev/mmcblk0 (with its partitions like /dev/mmcblk0p1 and /dev/mmcblk0p2) plus special additional disks on the same eMMC device like /dev/mmcblk0boot0 and /dev/mmcblk0boot1 and /dev/mmcblk0rpmb (issue #2087).
Now there is in default.conf MODULES=( 'all_modules' )
which means that now by default all kernel modules
get included in the recovery system (issue #2041).
Usually this is required when migrating to different hardware.
Additionaly it makes the recovery system better prepared when this or that
additional kernel module is needed, e.g. to ensure a USB keyboard is usable
in the recovery system (issue #1870) or to ensure data on external
medium (e.g. iso9660) can be read (issue #1202).
Furthermore this is helpful to be on the safe side against possibly missing
dependant kernel modules that are not automatically found (issue #1355).
The drawback of MODULES=( ‘all_modules’ ) is that it makes the recovery system
(and its ISO image) somewhat bigger (see issue #2041 for some numbers).
With MODULES=() the old behaviour can be still specified.
There is a minor backward incompatible change:
Before the user had to specify in etc/rear/local.conf
MODULES=( "${MODULES[@]}" 'moduleX' 'moduleY' )
to get some specific modules included in addition to the ones
via an empty MODULES=() but now the user must specify
MODULES=( 'moduleX' 'moduleY' )
for that because with “${MODULES[@]}” the new default value ‘all_modules’
would be kept which would trigger that all modules get included
so that now MODULES=( "${MODULES[@]}" 'moduleX' 'moduleY' )
includes all kernel modules in the recovery system which includes
in particular ‘moduleX’ and ‘moduleY’ so that things still work
but with a bigger recovery system.
For details see the MODULES description in default.conf.
The new verify script layout/save/default/950_verify_disklayout_file.sh verifies the disklayout.conf file that is created by “rear mkrescue/mkbackup”. Currently only some very basic verification is implemented: It verifies that the ‘disk’ entries look syntactically correct (only basic value type testing), the ‘part’ entries look syntactically correct (only basic value type testing), the ‘part’ entries specify consecutive partitions. The latter is needed to make ReaR more fail-safe in case of sparse partition schemes (i.e. when there are non-consecutive partitions) because currently “rear recover” fails when there are non-consecutive partitions (issue #1681). In general verification of the created disklayout.conf should help to avoid failures when it is too late (i.e. when “rear recover” fails). It is better to error out early during “rear mkrescue/mkbackup”. It may happen that layout/save/default/950_verify_disklayout_file.sh falsely lets “rear mkrescue/mkbackup” error out because of false alarm. The immediate workaround for the user in such cases is to remove that script or skip what it does by adding a ‘return 0’ command at its very beginning.
Basic support for EFISTUB booting: Via the new config variable EFI_STUB (see default.conf) the user can (and if needed must) specify that the recreated system should boot via EFISTUB. If EFI_STUB is specified but some boot loader like GRUB2 or ELILO is used on the original system, the recreated system gets migrated to boot (only) via EFISTUB.
The whole ‘rear dump’ output format need to be changed to improve it to clearly distinguish array elements.
Now during “rear mkrescue/mkbackup” md5sums are created for all regular files in in the recovery system and stored as /md5sums.txt in the recovery system. During recovery system startup it verifies those md5sums. Via the new config variable EXCLUDE_MD5SUM_VERIFICATION (see default.conf) the user can specify what files should be excluded from being verified to avoid errors on “false positives”.
GRUB2 installation on x86 and ppc64le architecture was completely rewritten and enhanced by the new config variable GRUB2_INSTALL_DEVICES (see default.conf) so that now the user can specify what he wants if needed and in MIGRATION_MODE disk mappings are applied when devices in GRUB2_INSTALL_DEVICES match.
In packaging/rpm/rear.spec reactivated ‘BuildRoot’ and ‘defattr’ because both are required for building ‘rear’ RPM packages on SLES 11 and RHEL 5 / CentOS 5 via the openSUSE Build Service and removed /etc/cron.d/rear and related things (issues #2135 #1855 #1856 #1908 #1892)
In layout/prepare/default/420_autoresize_last_partitions.sh continue with the next disk if the current one has no partitions otherwise the “Find the last partition for the current disk” code fails (issue #2134)
Improved handling of broken symlinks inside the recovery system: Relative symbolic links are now properly handled. Directories, which are link targets, are not copied into the recovery system but a meaningful hint is printed that COPY_AS_IS can be used for that (issues #2129 #2130 #2131)
In layout/prepare/GNU/Linux/135_include_btrfs_subvolumes_generic_code.sh fixed ‘btrfs subvolume set-default’ command for older versions of ‘btrfsprogs’ where that command requires both arguments ‘subvolid’ and ‘path’ (issue #2119)
For backup NBU: Exclude the whole ‘/usr/openv/netbackup/logs’ directory instead of only the files in that directory (issue #2132)
Fixed layout mapping error when TCG Opal 2 self-encrypting disks were present but had to be excluded due to a non-existent disk during recovery. This exclusion was not handled properly (issue #2126)
In build/default/995_md5sums_rootfs.sh also exclude all files with a trailing ‘~’ in their name because those are also excluded when the recovery system initrd is made by pack/GNU/Linux/900_create_initramfs.sh (issue #2127)
Suppressed unwanted “Welcome to Relax-and-Recover …” etc/motd messages from ‘chroot $ROOTFS_DIR /bin/bash –login …’ calls that appear in the log file or in the stdout of the chroot call when the output is further processes by ‘grep’ by redirecting stdin of the chroot call to /dev/null because no input is needed (issues #2120 #2125)
Replace RULE_FILES with a global UDEV_NET_MAC_RULE_FILES in default.conf (issues #2074 #2123)
Added comment to default.conf that tells when KEEP_BUILD_DIR is automatically set to true (issue #2121)
Added /usr/openv/netbackup/sec/at/lib/ to NBU_LD_LIBRARY_PATH in default.conf (issues #2105 #2122)
Simplified awk constructs in 320_include_uefi_env.sh into using plain grep and a bash array to avoid inexplicable wrong behaviour in some cases that is somehow related to the nullglob bash option together with different kind of awk (issues #2095 #2115)
For older systems (e.g. like SLES11) where /dev is no mountpoint in the recovery system we first mount TARGET_FS_ROOT/dev as ‘tmpfs’ and then we copy all /dev contents from the recovery system into TARGET_FS_ROOT/dev to make all recovery system /dev contents available at TARGET_FS_ROOT/dev (which are needed therein for things like “chroot TARGET_FS_ROOT mkinitrd”) but only as long as the recovery system runs. On the rebooted target system its pristine /dev will be there. This is basically what finalize/default/100_populate_dev.sh had done but now without dirty remainders on the user’s target system disk (issue #2113).
Do not copy symlink targets in /proc/ /sys/ /dev/ or /run/ into the ReaR recovery system. For example on SLES11 /lib/udev/devices/core is a symlink to /proc/kcore so that “rear mkrescue” basically hangs up while copying /proc/kcore because it is huge (issue #2112)
Avoid needless things when there is more than one disk: Avoid tot go into MIGRATION_MODE in any case when there is more than one disk. Avoid that GRUB2 gets needlessly installed two times on the same device (issue #2108)
Fixed disk device name in efibootmgr call for eMMC devices: For eMMC devices the trailing ‘p’ in the disk device name (as in /dev/mmcblk0p that is derived from /dev/mmcblk0p1) needs to be stripped (to get /dev/mmcblk0), otherwise the efibootmgr call fails because of a wrong disk device name (issue #2103)
For Ubuntu 18.x use /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf as /etc/resolv.conf in the recovery system: Basically the /etc/resolv.conf symlink target and /lib/systemd/resolv.conf contain only the systemd-resolved stub resolver “nameserver 127.0.0.53” and only /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf contains a real nameserver (issues #2018 #2101)
When mktemp needs to be called with a TEMPLATE call it with sufficent XXXXXXXXXX in the TEMPLATE, otherwise use the mktemp default (issue #2092)
LPAR/PPC64 bootlist was incorrectly set when having multiple ‘prep’ partitions: Use the specific right syntax for array expansion of the boot_list array (issues #2096 #2097 #2098 #1068)
Ensure that the Error function results a direct and complete exit of the whole running ‘rear’ program even if the Error function was called from a (possibly nested) subshell in a sourced script: Now the Error function terminates all descendant processes of MASTER_PID except MASTER_PID and the current (subshell) process that runs the Error function and when Error was called from a subshell it finally exits its own subshell so that when the Error function finished only MASTER_PID is still running and finally MASTER_PID exits as usual via the DoExitTasks function (issues #2088 #2089 #2099)
Ignore special additional disks on eMMC devices named “rpmb” and “boot”: Now the extract_partitions() function skips device nodes on eMMC devices like /dev/mmcblk0rpmb or /dev/mmcblk0boot0 and /dev/mmcblk0boot1 because ReaR wrongly recognized those ‘disk’ type block devices as if they were ‘part’ type block devices, i.e. those are no partitions, but special additional disks on the eMMC device (issue #2087)
Updated the OPALPBA workflow: Set USE_RESOLV_CONF=’no’ as networking is not required/available in the PBA. Avoid copying in the entire /etc/alternatives directory as its links could pull in lots of unwanted stuff, which is not required in rescue systems. Clean up plymouth/unlock service startup (issue #2083)
Network: Record permanent mac address when device is enslaved in a Team, or else /etc/mac-addresses will record broken information. Use “ethtool -P” as the preferred method to retrieve the MAC address. Otherwise fall back to other methods, which may lead to some invalid MAC address when using Teams (issues #1954 #2065)
Added ‘net-tools’ to Debian dependencies as required for ‘route’ command which belongs to the REQUIRED_PROGS (issue #2082)
Added an additional separated new btrfs_subvolumes_setup_generic() function to recreate all mounted Btrfs subvolumes in a more generic way. The old btrfs_subvolumes_setup function was renamed into btrfs_subvolumes_setup_SLES and this one is called as fallback to be backward compatible. For both btrfs_subvolumes_setup implementations it is individually configurable which one is used for which btrfs device via the new config variables BTRFS_SUBVOLUME_SLES_SETUP and BTRFS_SUBVOLUME_GENERIC_SETUP. Currently it is not documented because it is work in progress where arbitrary further changes will happen (e.g. the current btrfs_subvolumes_setup_generic function makes diskrestore.sh fail on older systems where ‘btrfs subvolume set-default’ needs two arguments) so one has to inspect the current code and comments in the layout/prepare/GNU/Linux/13X_include_… scripts to see how things currently work (issues #2067 #2079 #2080 #2084 #2085)
Fixed SSH root login on the recovery system with some configurations: On Ubuntu 18.04 with OpenSSH 7.6, /etc/ssh/sshd_config contains commented-out lines for ‘PermitRootLogin’ and other options. This fix makes sure that settings changed for sshd in the ReaR recovery system will be real, not comments (issue #2070)
RAWDISK output: Improved device partition detection (e.g. Ubuntu 18.04). On Ubuntu 18.04, it has been observed that after creating a loop device and creating a properly sized VFAT file system >250 MB on it, after mounting the file system size was actually just 30 MB. Reason: The partition detection did not pick up the correct partition sizes of the associated image file. This change uses losetup’s –partscan option (supported by util-linux v2.21 and above) to offer one additional opportunity to detect partitions. If the option is not available, a traditional losetup call will be used as a fallback (issue #2071)
OPALPBA output fix: Do not include any PBA into another PBA. A TCG Opal pre-boot authentication (PBA) system is a minimal operating system constructed by ReaR to unlock self-encrpyting disks before the regular OS takes over. Before this PR, it could happen that a previously created PBA was included in a subsequently created PBA, causing it to be unnecessarily large (issue ##2072)
Now there is in default.conf MODULES=( ‘all_modules’ ) which means that now by default all kernel modules get included in the recovery system (issues #2041 #1870 #1202 #1355)
New verify script layout/save/default/950_verify_disklayout_file.sh to verify disklayout.conf that was created by “rear mkrescue/mkbackup” (issues #2060 #1681)
Refresh udev with trigger before activating multipath (issue #2064): Ensure that all information from multipath devices is updated by udev into /sys before activating multipath. This helps to mitigate certain kind of issues when something wrong in the SAN zoning configuration (issues #2002 #2016 #2019)
For backup NSR: It is of additional use to not skip the retrieval of the filesystems even in NSR_CLIENT_MODE so that this is now also done in NSR_CLIENT_MODE: Due to saving the save sets filesystem information in $VAR_DIR/recovery/nsr_paths within the recovery image one is able to retrieve/read this information during a recovery process i.e. for advising the EMC networker server team to recover the appropriate filesystem(-structure) from the backups beeing made (issue #2058)
Skip patching absolute symlinks during finalize stage (issue #2055). That does not actually fix issue #1338 but for now it should at least avoid patching wrong files. Furthermore do no longer create udev rules in the recreated system that have not been there. This way one can avoid that ReaR creates udev rules that are created and maintained by systemd/udev like /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules when one excludes such udev rules from being restored from the backup or by moving them away via BACKUP_RESTORE_MOVE_AWAY_FILES (issue #770)
Now /proc /sys /dev and /run are bind-mounted into TARGET_FS_ROOT at the beginning of the finalize stage via the new 110_bind_mount_proc_sys_dev_run.sh script and existing code in various finalize scripts for mounting /proc /sys /dev and things like that was removed and the finalize scripts were adapted and renumbered as needed (issues #2045 #2035)
Added eno-fix.rules to RULE_FILES for LAN interface MAC address changes to the ens-style LAN interface names instead of the older eno-type LAN names and aligned RULE_FILES content in the involved scripts (issue #2046)
Fixed 58-start-dhclient.sh script to make it work reliably with multiple network interfaces (issue #2038)
Borg backup restore enhancements and fixes: Added checks whether we can read Borg archive, user can enable progress display via BORGBACKUP_SHOW_PROGRESS=”yes”, corrected mounting of USB device when using Borg (issues #2029 #2037)
Fix for GRUB2 EFI modules search directory location: Instead of looking for GRUB2 modules only in /boot also find them in /usr/lib/grub*, where GRUB2 modules are normally installed by default (issue #2039)
Basic support for EFISTUB booting plus documentation (issues #1942 #2030)
Multipath optimizations: Optimized get_device_name() by calling “dmsetup info” only once, and for “dm” devices only. Removed collecting output of /sys/class/fc_transport since it can be very slow and is not used (issues #2020 #2034)
Suppress dispensable ‘set -x’ debug output unless called with ‘–debugscripts x’: A noticeable part (25% and more) of the ‘set -x’ debugscripts output is usually of no interest and therefore such output is suppressed by default (e.g. when rear is called with ‘-D’) unless rear is called with ‘–debugscripts x’ where the full debugscripts output is still there as it was before (issue #2024)
Cleaned up the Docker specific exclude part in 230_filesystem_layout.sh: Determine docker_root_dir only once and try to be safer against possibly crippled Docker installations (e.g. timeout ‘docker info’) and be safe against empty docker_root_dir (otherwise all mountpoints would match the empty string and we would would skip all mountpoints) and show possible errors to the user in any case (issues #1989 #2021)
Improved setup of /etc/resolv.conf in the recovery system: In case of static networking setup in the recovery system a plain traditional /etc/resolv.conf file with an entry of a remote ‘nameserver DNS.server.IP.address’ is needed. It cannot work when /etc/resolv.conf contains only loopback IP addresses (which happens when the stub resolver systemd-resolved is used) or when there is no nameserver entry so that “rear mkrescue/mkbackup” errors out in this case. In contrast when USE_DHCLIENT is ture (e.g. when DHCP is used on the original system) then during recovery system startup /etc/resolv.conf will be generated by /bin/dhclient-script so that it does not matter what its content was before. For special cases the user can specify what he wants via the new USE_RESOLV_CONF variable (issues #2015 #2018 #2076)
Improved ‘rear dump’ output to clearly distinguish array elements. The whole ‘rear dump’ output format was changed. Now it shows normal string variables as STRING="string of words" and arrays as a beautified/simplified ‘declare -p’ output as ARRAY=("first element" "second element" ... ) unless in debug mode where the plain ‘declare -p’ output is shown like declare -- STRING="string of words" and declare -a ARRAY=([0]="first element" [1]="second element" ... ) that is needed for complicated array elements that contain brackets. Furthermore now the ‘rear dump’ output can be directly sourced (issue #2014)
Error out when we cannot make a bootable EFI image of GRUB2 which is required when UEFI is used (issue 2013)
Allow non-interactive authentication with rsync by using BACKUP_RSYNC_OPTIONS to specify the “–password-file=/full/path/to/file” rsync option (issue #2011)
Add possibility for user to specify whether or not show Borg stats at the end of backup session (issue #2008)
Adaption for Fedora 29: grub2-efi-x64-modules does not contain linuxefi module (issue #2001)
Let the user optionally specify mkfs.xfs options if needed to recreate XFS filesystems with different options than before (e.g. in MIGRATION_MODE because of different replacement hardware) via the new MKFS_XFS_OPTIONS config variable (issue #2005)
Network interface renaming: Automatically map device to its new name when device is found on the system with same MAC address but different name (issue #2004)
It is no BugError when neither getty nor agetty are avaiable. Such a case it is an Error because the user must have the programs in REQUIRED_PROGS installed on his system
Fix for ‘error:unrecognized number’ when booting ISO on PPC: Issue is caused by incorrect, according to PAPR specification, bootinfo entity parsing code in GRUB2 (issue #1978)
Fixed that in recovery system DHCP client did not iterate through all network interfaces. It incorrectly took only the first one. If the interface that is intended for recovery was not the first one, it had failed (issue #1986)
Automatically exclude BUILD_DIR from the backup. When TMPDIR was specified to something not in /tmp, BUILD_DIR was not automatically excluded from the backup (issue #1993)
Support ISOs bigger than 4GiB with OUTPUT=ISO by including the udf kernel module into the recovery system when mkisofs or genisoimage is used (not needed for xorrisoifs) and enable creating an hybrid iso9660/udf DVD (issue #1836)
Cleaned up how KERNEL_FILE is set: Now the KERNEL_FILE variable is set in the ‘prep’ stage only by the new prep/GNU/Linux/400_guess_kernel.sh that replaces the old pack/GNU/Linux/400_guess_kernel.sh and all the various different 300_copy_kernel.sh scripts (except output/USB/Linux-i386/830_copy_kernel_initrd.sh) are removed because the 300_copy_kernel.sh scripts had also only set the KERNEL_FILE variable in various ways. Additionally it errors out in various output stage scripts when kernel or initrd are missing and it shows aligned error messages in those cases to the user. Finally it errors out when the file does not exist or is a broken symlink. (issues #1851 #1983 #1985)
Enhanced and more robust exclude of vfat filesystem (ESP) from SELinux relabeling during recover process (issue #1977)
Fixed NBU (NetBackup) not working since ReaR 2.4: With NetBackup, too many binaries were included, causing the recovery system verification to fail or print error messages. A new NBU_LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable is used during verification. The RequiredSharedOjects() function was fixed to not list the left part of the ldd mapping when there is a right part: Some NetBackup libraries have a mapping such as “/lib/ld64.so => /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2”, causing the RequiredSharedOjects() function to print “/lib/ld64.so” which does not resolve (issue #1974)
Add /etc/ca-certificates directory to recovery system (issue #1971)
Skip 630_run_efibootmgr.sh when UEFI_BOOTLOADER is empty or not a regular file and determine the ESP mountpoint from UEFI_BOOTLOADER and use $TARGET_FS_ROOT/boot/efi as fallback plus corrected logic whether or not NOBOOTLOADER is set empty (issues #1942 #1945)
Missing libraries in recovery system caused executables to fail because libraries were skipped from copying when their library path was a substring of another already copied library, for example /path/to/lib was skipped when /other/path/to/lib was already copied (issue #1975)
Check for carriage return in local/site/rescue.conf files (issue #1965)
Specific required programs are added to REQUIRED_PROGS depending on what component keywords are used in disklayout.conf (issue #1963)
Cleanup and enhancement of REQUIRED_PROGS and PROGS checks (issue #1962)
Moved PROGS from GNU/Linux.conf to default.conf REQUIRED_PROGS (issue #892)
Record permanent mac address when device is enslaved in a bond, or else /etc/mac-addresses will record broken information (issue #1954)
For Slackware Linux: Added automatic OS vendor and version detection. Added logic to search for kernel files when the standard ELILO kernel install paths come up empty. Added legacy LILO bootloader support.
Enhanced and cleaned up 985_fix_broken_links.sh to find symlinks in the recovery system where the link target is outside of the recovery system and in such cases the missing link target gets copied into the recovery system plus more verbose error reporting to the user (issue #1638)
Fixed that the FindStorageDrivers function failed on kernels with no modules. When MODULES=( ‘no_modules’ ) is set FindStorageDrivers() is now skipped (issue #1941)
Increased the default USB_UEFI_PART_SIZE from 200 to 400 MiB (issue #1205)
Enhanced rescue/GNU/Linux/310_network_devices.sh for Bonding and Teaming when it is configured with LACP. Bonding should not be simplified in this case plus added code for non-simplified Teaming (issue #1926). Furthermore simplified/hardened the tests/setup1 and tests/setup2 testbeds.
In 500_clone_keyboard_mappings.sh avoid running find in the whole tree of filesystems which takes ages (issue #1906)
Let 100_include_partition_code.sh error out when the parted command is not there (issue #1933)
Suppress bash stderr messages like ‘unary operator expected’ or ‘integer expression expected’ where a particular ‘test’ intentionally also fails this way (issue #1931)
Show errors to the user via LogPrintError instead of only LogPrint because LogPrint outputs only in case of verbose mode (issue #1914)
Avoid dangling symlinks when copying ReaR config files into the ReaR recovery system by copying the content of the symlink target via ‘cp -L’ (issue #1923)
Avoid ‘nullglob’ pitfalls in 250_populate_efibootimg.sh and generally overhalued that script (issue #1921)
Check that CONFIG_DIR is a directory (issue #1815)
Avoid bash error messages like: “eq: unary operator expected” when using older versions of xfsprogs (issue #1915)
Added exclusion of zram devices from device mapping in default.conf. By default zram devices are not to be mapped, exactly as it is done for ramdisk and loop devices (issue #1916)
Fixed a non-working awk command in the generate_layout_dependencies() function that falsely also matched commented ‘#btrfsmountedsubvol’ entries in disklayout.conf with an egrep command that is more in line with how it had worked before (issue #1497)
Fixed and enhanced NETFS+tar backup pipe exit code handling (issue #1913)
Moved the functionality of the recovery system setup script 67-check-by-label-cdrom.sh into the mount_url function ‘iso’ case plus additional enhancements there with a user dialog if things are not o.k. and removed the no longer needed 67-check-by-label-cdrom.sh (issues #1893 #1891 #326)
Fixed that on LPAR/PPC64 PowerVM the boot devices order list was incorrectly set (via ‘bootlist’) when having multiple ‘prep’ partitions. Now handling of multiple ‘prep’ partitions was added plus enhanced handling of multiple prep partitions and multipath (issue #1886)
Fixed and enhanced the get_disk_size and get_block_size functions so that now by default blockdev is used (if exists) to retrieve the size of the disk and its block size and compute partition start using 512 bytes blocks (this is hardcoded in the Linux kernel) to fix wrong partition information when a disk has 4K block size (issue #1884)
Print multipath device name during “rear recover” when “firendly_name” option is off (issue #1889)
Now the Error function shows some last messages of the last sourced script to the user (issues #1877 #1875)
Duplicity: Misc improvements (issues #1876 #1879 #1882)
Added code to recognize persistent LAN interface and manipulate KERNEL_CMDLINE (issue #1874)
Initial tentative support for OBDR on ppc64le (issue #1868)
Wait for systemd-udevd to avoid broken pipe error in 40-start-udev-or-load-modules.sh (issue #1832)
Aviod duplicate UUID in boot menuentry when snapper is used (issue #1871)
Added choice to confirm identical layout mapping only once plus disabling MIGRATION_MODE (issue #1857)
Verify md5sums of files in recovery system (issues #1859 #1895)
Fedora28: syslinux needs libcom32.c32 to boot from HD and missing ldlinux.c32 and libutil.c32 prevents PXE booting (issues #1861, #1866)
Add support for Slackware UEFI/USB (issues #1853, #1863)
RAWDISK output portability improvements (issue #1846)
Fixed, simplified, and enhanced GRUB2 installation on x86 and ppc64le architecture (issues #1828, #1845, #1847, #1437)
New features, bigger enhancements, and possibly backward incompatible changes:
Major rework and changed default behaviour how ReaR behaves in migration mode when partitions can or must be resized to fit on replacement disks with different size. The new default behaviour is that only the partition end value of the last partition on a disk (and therefore its partition size) may get changed if really needed but no partition start value gets changed to avoid changes of the partition alignment. The new 420_autoresize_last_partitions script implements the new behaviour and the old 400_autoresize_disks was renamed into 430_autoresize_all_partitions to still provide the old behaviour if that is explicitly requested by the user but the old behaviour may result unexpected changes of arbitrary partitions on a disk. The new config variables AUTORESIZE_PARTITIONS AUTORESIZE_EXCLUDE_PARTITIONS AUTOSHRINK_DISK_SIZE_LIMIT_PERCENTAGE AUTOINCREASE_DISK_SIZE_THRESHOLD_PERCENTAGE determine how ReaR behaves in migration mode when partitions can or must be resized. With AUTORESIZE_PARTITIONS=’yes’ the old behaviour is done. With AUTORESIZE_PARTITIONS=’no’ no partition is resized by ReaR. With the default AUTORESIZE_PARTITIONS=’’ at most the last active partition on each active disk gets resized but only if really needed which also depends on the settings of the other config variables above. For details see default.conf and the two ‘autoresize’ scripts. For some examples see https://github.com/rear/rear/pull/1733
Network setup was completely reworked to support bonding, bridges, vlans and teaming. There is a full rewrite of the 310_network_devices.sh script generating network interfaces for use during ReaR rescue/recovery system networking setup via the 60-network-devices.sh script. It also handles corner cases/odd setups that can be found from time to time, typically when the administrator uses bonding plus bridges plus vlans as well as teaming.
Initial (limited) support for certain ARM based hardware. It should work with Raspberry Pis, most TI and Allwinner devices. There are two ARM specific BOOTLOADER variable values where ‘ARM-ALLWINNER’ is for Allwinner devices that will backup and restore the 2nd stage bootloader versus plain ‘ARM’ which is a dummy that does nothing so that on Raspberry Pi and most TI devices you need to include the first FAT partition (with the MLO or bootcode.bin) in your backup.
Simplified and enhanced TSM restore plus first draft of TSM backup.
EMC Avamar support has been added.
Duplicity backup has been seriously enhanced.
Support for TCG Opal 2-compliant self-encrypting disks and RAWDISK output.
YUM+backup adds the ability to backup and restore files to the YUM method.
Copy backup restore log into recreated system (issue #1803)
Sesam integration: add sesam bin directory to LD_LIBRARY_PATH (issue #1817)
ReaR recovery fails when the OS contains a Thin Pool/Volume (issues #1380, #1806)
Make SLES12-GA/SP0 btrfs recovery work again (issues #1796, #1813)
Verify if dm-X is a partition before adding to sysfs_paths (issue #1805)
Do not start multipathd when not needed (issue #1804)
Better way to get multiapth partion name (issue #1802)
Exclude multipath device that does not have mounted fs (issue #1801)
Do not print each files restores by TSM in main output (issue #1797)
man page BACKUP SOFTWARE INTEGRATION update (issues #1788, #1791)
In the DRLM specific function drlm_import_runtime_config() solve problem with some variables loading config from DRLM (issue #1794)
Better describe NON_FATAL_BINARIES_WITH_MISSING_LIBRARY in default.conf (issues #1792, #1693)
Introduced KEYMAPS_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY and KEYMAP variables, see the default.conf file (issues #1781, #1787)
Fix multipath partition replacement and multipath partition naming (issue #1765)
Skip LUKS encrypted disks when guessing bootloader (issue #1779)
First draft of TSM backup (issue #1348)
HP RAID code was updated as the new executable is now called as “ssacli” (issue #1760)
Exclude docker file systems from layout (issue #1749)
Added migation mode confirmation at beginning of finalize stage (issue #1758)
Show descendant processes PIDs with their commands in the log via pstree or ps as fallback (issues #1755, #1756)
Check for ‘Hah!IdontNeedEFI’ GUID number for a GPT BIOS boot partition (issues #1752, #1754, #1780)
Fixed invalid reported return code (always 0) upon NBU restoration failure (issue #1751)
Run exit tasks code with default bash flags and options (issues #700, #1747, #1748)
Major rework and changed default behaviour regarding AUTORESIZE_PARTITIONS (issues #102, #1731, #1733, #1746)
YUM+backup adds the ability to backup and restore files to the YUM method (issues #1464, #1740)
Add dbus user and group by default (issues #1710, #1743)
Add gsk libs to TSM_LD_LIBRARY_PATH (issue #1744)
Use ‘grub2-install –no-nvram’ on PowerNV system (issue #1742)
We can use chronyd as time syncing mechanism now as well (issue #1739)
Trace and fix broken symbolic links in rootfs (issues #1638, #1734)
Borg Backup can now use USB disk as well as backup storage area (issue #1730)
Initial support for ARM (issue #1662)
Improve the network parameters on the Linux Kernel command line (issue #1725)
Clean termination of descendant processes (issues #1712, #1720)
Simpler and more fail-safe SLE btrfs-example.conf files (issues #1714, #1716)
Use a fallback to get interface state using the ‘carrier’ status (issues #1701, #1719)
Fix duplicity backup (issue #1695)
Include Bareos plugin directory to make bareos-fd start reliably (issues #1692, #1708)
Again support GPT partition names with blanks (issues #212, #1563, #1706)
Improvements around Borg Backup (issues #1698, #1700)
Automatically add ‘missing’ devices to MD arrays with not enough physical devices upon restore (issue #1697)
Network setup was completely reworked to support bonding, bridges, vlans and teaming (issue #1574)
Fixed restore backup when BACKUP_INTEGRITY_CHECK=1 (issue #1685)
Support TCG Opal 2-compliant self-encrypting disks and RAWDISK output (issue #1659)
Add EMC Avamar backup (issues #1621, #1677, #1687)
Avoid falsely detected changed layout for ‘rear checklayout’ (issues #1657, #1658, #1673)
Simplified TSM dsmc restore and improved TSM connection test (issues #1534, #1643, #1645)
Duplicity with duply waits forever (issues #1664, #1672)
Duplicity: Add Support for NETFS URLs (issues #1554, #1665, #1668, #1669)
Many minor fixes (too many to list them all - use ‘git log’ to view them). A big thank you to all contributors as without you it would be impossible to keep up with the development in the Linux area. We love you all… :-)
New features and bigger enhancements:
First steps towards running Relax-and-Recover unattended in general. Several user dialogs that had been implemented in ReaR via the bash builtin ‘read’ or the bash ‘select’ keyword are now implemented via the new UserInput function. The UserInput function proceeds with a default input value after a timeout so that it is now possible to let ReaR run unattended with its default behaviour. Additionally one can predefine an automated input value for each particular UserInput function call so that it is now also possible for the user to predefine what ReaR should do when running unattended. For details see the USER_INPUT_… config variables in default.conf. Currently not all user dialogs use the UserInput function so that this or that user dialog needs to be adapted when it is reported to us via our issue tracker. In contrast when programs that are called by ReaR work interactively (e.g. third-party backup tools that show user dialogs or password prompts) the program call itself must be adapted to run unattended (if possible), see the section ‘It should be possible to run ReaR unattended’ in our https://github.com/rear/rear/wiki/Coding-Style Wiki article.
SSH support in the ReaR rescue/recovery system was overhauled. By default it is now secure which means the recovery system is free of SSH secrets. Individual settings can be specified via the SSH_FILES, SSH_UNPROTECTED_PRIVATE_KEYS, and SSH_ROOT_PASSWORD config variables (for details see default.conf).
Improved verification of the ReaR rescue/recovery system contents. Now during ‘rear mkrescue/mkbackup’ there is a verification step where ‘ldd’ tests for each program/binary and library in the recovery system whether or not its required binaries/libraries can be found in the recovery system.
Improved autodetection during ‘rear recover’ when disks on the replacement hardware seem to not match compared to what there was on the original system so that ReaR is now more fail-safe against recreating on a possibly wrong disk.
Possibly backward incompatible changes:
In addition to STDERR now also STDOUT is redirected into the ReaR log file. Accordingly all output of programs that are called by ReaR is now in the log file so that the log file content is more complete and there is no longer unintended verbose information from programs on the terminal where ReaR was lauched. On the other hand this means when programs prompt via STDOUT to get some user input (e.g. a program prompts for a user confirmation under this or that circumstances) the program’s STDOUT prompt is no longer visible to the user when the program was not called properly in the particular ReaR script as described in the section ‘What to do with stdin, stdout, and stderr’ in our https://github.com/rear/rear/wiki/Coding-Style Wiki article. We tried to fix as many program calls as possible but it is impossible (with reasonable effort / with a reasonable amount of time) to check all program calls in all ReaR scripts so that this or that unnoticed program call will need to be fixed when it is reported to us via our issue tracker.
SSH support in the ReaR rescue/recovery system is now secure by default. There are no longer private SSH keys in the recovery system by default and a RSA key is generated from scratch when starting sshd during recovery system startup. Accordingly it does no longer work by default to use SSH in the recovery system via the SSH keys that exist on the original system. To get SSH keys included in the recovery system use the SSH_FILES and SSH_UNPROTECTED_PRIVATE_KEYS config variables (for details see default.conf).
Verification of required binaries/libraries in the ReaR rescue/recovery system. By default it is now fatal when ‘ldd’ reports a ‘not found’ library for any file in a /bin/ or /sbin/ directory in the recovery system so that now ‘rear mkrescue/mkbackup’ may fail where it had (blindly) worked before. In particular third-party backup tools sometimes use their libraries via unexpected ways which can cause ‘false alarm’ by the ‘ldd’ test. With the new config variable NON_FATAL_BINARIES_WITH_MISSING_LIBRARY one can specify for which files a ‘not found’ library should be considered as ‘false alarm’ (for details see default.conf).
Improved MIGRATION_MODE autodetection when the disk layout looks ambiguous. Now ‘rear recover’ switches by default more often into MIGRATION_MODE where manual disk layout configuration happens via several user dialogs so that by default ‘rear recover’ shows more often user dialogs compared to before but the intended behaviour can be enforced via the MIGRATION_MODE config variable (for details see default.conf).
Use /etc/os-release and /etc/system-release before falling back to lsb_release check in function SetOSVendorAndVersion (issues #1611, #731)
Make BACKUP_URL=iso for mkrescue and mkbackuponly no longer fatal (issue #1613)
Add ntpdate support (issue #1608)
Fix for XFS file system recreation code. In xfsprogs >= 4.7 log section sunit=0 is considered invalid (issue #1603)
Changed the macro fedora_release into fedora in the rear.spec file (issue #1192 and bz1419512)
Borg backup as back end now displays progress, when ReaR is launched in verbose mode (issue #1594)
Better MIGRATION_MODE autodetection (pull request #1593 related to issue #1271)
With the new config variable NON_FATAL_BINARIES_WITH_MISSING_LIBRARY the user can specify what programs where the ‘ldd’ test reports ‘not found’ libraries are non-fatal so that those programs in the recovery system do not lead to an Error abort of “rear mkrescue/mkbackup”. This is a generic method so that the user can avoid issues in particular with third-party backup tools that soemtimes have unexpected ways to use their specific libraries like https://github.com/rear/rear/issues/1533 (for TSM) and https://github.com/rear/rear/pull/1560 (for FDR/Upstream).
Add a NSR_CLIENT_MODE to the backup method NSR (issue #1584)
Let /bin/ldd detect *.so with relative paths (issue #1560)
Use UserInput in some more usual places to improve that ‘rear recover’ can run unattended in migration mode (issues #1573, #1399)
Error out for OUTPUT_URL=null together with OUTPUT=USB (issue #1571)
Added/updated paths for FDR/Upstream 4.0 because FDR/Upstream 4.0 includes changes to some file paths (issue #1559)
Fix copying kernel modules when module aliases are present (issue #1567)
Netbackup agents not automatically started on RHEL 7 (issue #1523)
Forbid mkrescue and mkbackuponly for iso backup scheme (issues #1547, #1548)
Only support OpenSSH 3.1 and later for SSH setup (issue #1530)
Implemented USB_DEVICE_FILESYSTEM_LABEL (issue #1535)
Split network-functions.sh into DHCP setup and general ReaR functions (issue #1517)
Avoid leaking unprotected SSH private key files onto rescue medium (issues #1512, #1513)
Improve cryptographic security and user-friendliness for LUKS volumes (issue #1493)
Improve ReaR network migration (issues #1605, #1510, #1399)
Improved encrypted password detection in 500_ssh.sh (issue #1503)
Several code improvements in the way libraries are detected and copied (issues #1521, #1502, #1494)
Allow btrfsmountedsubvol to be excluded via EXCLUDE_RECREATE (issue #1497)
Avoid recreation of non-existing btrfs subvolumes (issue #1496)
Add automatically some important kernel parameters to KERNEL_CMDLINE (issue #1495)
Cleanup and simplified default input for the UserInput function (issue #1498)
Avoid systemd log messages about multiple disk partitions with identical name that happened because ReaR used a static ‘rear-noname’ for originally unnamed partitions. Original gpt disk partitions may be unnamed but parted requires a name for each gpt partition. Now ReaR uses the basename of the partition device path (e.g. sda1, sda2) for originally unnamed partitions (issue #1483)
Enhanced how the ssh user is copied into the recovery system and improved detection of the ssh user (issue #1489)
Use meaningful variable for automated UserInput. Enforce calling UserInput with a UserInput ID so that automated UserInput is always possible for the user. Use and enforce uppercase letters in UserInput IDs because the resulting variable names are meant as user config variables (issue #1473)
Fix UEFI tools integration (issues #1477, #1478)
Added a new YUM backup method which will recreate the system by installing it from scratch via installing RPM packages. The YUM backup method uses the yum package manager in the same manner as the ZYPPER backup method (issue #1464)
BACKUP_PROG_OPTIONS used to be a string variable, turn it into an array (issue #1475)
Now CLONE_ALL_USERS_GROUPS always extends the CLONE_USERS and CLONE_GROUPS arrays (issues #1471, #1464)
PXE code improvements (issue #1466)
Several improvements in the multipath code to allow full migration (issues #1449, #1450)
Several improvements on the TSM code (issues #1539, #1461, #1452)
Activate btrfs filesystem creation with uuid. Recent btrfs version finally added this option (issue #1463)
By default a directories_permissions_owner_group file is created that saves permissions, owner, and group of basic directories plus symbolic link names and link targets of basic directories. Those basic directories are the currently used mountpoints (except some unwanted “noise” from all what there is mounted) plus the directories of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) that actually exist on the system. Additionally with the new DIRECTORIES_TO_CREATE array the user can now explicitly specify directories and symlinks that are still missing in his particular environment (issue #1459)
Fix for cryptsetup hang on cryptsetup luksOpen ... when dmsetup is not present in recovery system (issue #1458)
Enhance MOUNTPOINTS_TO_RESTORE into DIRECTORIES_TO_CREATE (issue #1455)
Several improvements for ppc64le/ppc64 arch. Systemd automatic serial console detection, lilo and yaboot improvements (issue #1446, #1442)
Introduction of UserInput in 300_map_disks.sh (issues 1399 and 1431)
Adapt /etc/motd when ‘rear recover’ is running to avoid the additional ‘Run rear recover to restore your system’ message that only makes sense as long as ‘rear recover’ was not ever started (issue 1433)
SLES12 with btrfs but without snapshots failed to recreate/mount btrfs FS/subvolumes during recovery (issue #1036)
Let the get_disk_size() function retry several times to be more fail-safe when udev needs some time until device files appear. This introduces the new generic helper function retry_command() plus the new config variables REAR_SLEEP_DELAY and REAR_MAX_RETRIES. For details see default.conf and lib/layout-functions.sh (issue #1370)
ReaR failed to continue due incorrect check of presence of USB device (REAR-000) in /proc/mounts, despite foregoing script (060_mount_NETFS_path.sh) did mounting of this device (issue #1415)
Add missing privilege separation dir to start sshd on Debian 9 (issue #1381)
Redirect rsync verbose output to backup log (issue #1387)
Add /yaboot to ISO_FILE when running SUSE ppc64 (issue #1414)
Add SSL cert directories so we can interact with Google Cloud Storage (issue #1402)
Modified the “unattended” into “automatic” with ISO_DEFAULT required for automated recovery tests (issue #1397)
Use the original fds when ReaR was launched (which are now saved as fd6, fd7, and fd8 for stdin, stdout, and stderr respectively) for actually intended user input and user output. To keep backward compatible behaviour all old deprecated usage of ‘>&8’ is converted into ‘>/dev/null’ but /dev/null usage in general should be cleaned up later (issues #887, #1395)
Added new generic UserInput and UserOutput plus LogUserOutput functions that are intended to replace current user input functionality that calls select or read directly. For the next ReaR version 2.3 it is planned to also redirect stdout into the log file in addition to stderr (issues #885, #1366, #1398, #1399)
The ‘make rpm’ now relies on ‘make srpm’ which creates the src.rpm package first. This src.rpm package can then be easily copied to another computer to rebuild a rpm package from it without needed the sources itself (or git checkout) (issue #1389)
Replaced some perl regexp with grep native extended regexp (issue #1376)
Introducing SECURE_BOOT_BOOTLOADER variable in default.conf. This variable should enable users booting with Secure Boot, to use whatever custom signed boot loader they like, and removes hard coded entry ‘shim.efi’ from the ReaR code (issue #1374)
Enhanced and cleaned up making ISO on POWER (ppc64/ppc64le). Now the backup can be stored in the ISO (via BACKUP_URL=iso…) and even multiple ISOs work on POWER now (issues #697, #1383)
Support for Grub2 installation with software RAID1 on Linux on POWER (ppc64/ppc64le) (issue #1369)
REBUILD_INITRAMFS variable was introduced. The new default.conf setting REBUILD_INITRAMFS=”yes” rebuilds the initramfs/initrd during “rear recover” to be more on the safe side. With REBUILD_INITRAMFS=”” the old behaviour can still be specified (issue #1321)
ISO_RECOVER_MODE=unattended mode (issue #1351) - required for automated ReaR testing with OUTPUT=ISO
MODULES variable supports now special values like ‘all_modules’, ‘loaded_modules’, ‘no_modules’ (issues #1202, #1355)
Include systemd/network to preserve “Predictable Network Interface Names” (issue #1349)
Various improvements regarding multipath (issues #1190, #1309, #1310, #1311, #1314, #1315, #1324, #1325, #1328, #1329, #1344, #1346)
Show OUTPUT variables in rear dump (issue #1337)
Added support for “grub PXE style” via PXE_CONFIG_GRUB_STYLE and PXE_TFTP_IP on non x86 platform (issue #1339)
Try ‘wipefs –force’ and use ‘dd’ as fallback to better clean up disk partitions (issue #1327)
Reorganized “finalize” scripts ordering and cleanup of the PPC bootloader installation (issue #1323)
Avoid long default wait in ‘dig’ when DNS servers are not set (issue #1319)
Fail-safe calculations in partitioning code (issues #1269, #1307)
Improved support on ppc/ppc64/ppc64le architectures (issues #1178, #1311, #1313, #1322)
Define hostname in both /etc/HOSTNAME and /etc/hostname in rescue image (for Arch) (issue #1316)
Rename network interface when MAC not present in udev (issue #1312)
Added support for ‘nano’ editor (in addition to ‘vi’) (issues #1298, #1306)
mmcblk disk types are now supported (issues #1301, #1302)
NETFS_RESTORE_CAPABILITIES variable was introduced to restore file capabilities in a proper way (issue #1283)
Added required libs and files for ‘curl’ with HTTPs by default (issues #1267, #1279)
More precise XFS file system creation during rear recover (issues #1208, #1213, #1276)
DRLM management and security improvements (issue #1252)
Improved BOOTLOADER support (issue #1242)
DRLM support for multiple backups via multiple config files (issue #1229)
FIRMWARE_FILES support to exclude firmware files in rescue image to reduce the size of image (issue #1216)
Enable SELinux in the rescue image for tar internal backup method if BACKUP_SELINUX_DISABLE=0 (issue #1215)
BOOT_OVER_SAN is now fully supported (issues #1190, #1309, #1314, #1315, #1325, #1329, #1344)
NVME disks are now fully supported (issue #1191)
Some initial basic support for new backup type ZYPPER was added (issues #1085, #1209)
Finding UEFI boot loaders on non standard places (issues #1204, #1225, #1293)
The USB UEFI partition size USB_UEFI_PART_SIZE for kernel image has been increased from 100 to 200 MB (issue #1205)
REAR_INITRD_COMPRESSION variable was introduced to specify initrd compression (e.g. ‘lzma’ for PPC64) (issues #1142, #1218, #1290)
New backup type BLOCKCLONE was added to backup non-Linux partitions (e.g. Windows NTFS partitions) (issues #1078, #1162, #1172, #1180)
Bareos 16.2 is now supported (issue #1169)
New USB_PARTITION_ALIGN_BLOCK_SIZE and USB_DEVICE_FILESYSTEM_PARAMS variables were added (issue #1217)
Improved the USB backup selection menu during the recovery via USB (issue #1166)
USB_SUFFIX variable was introduced to align backup on USB with backup on NFS (issues #1164, #1160, #1145)
Forbid incremental backup to work on BACKUP_URL=usb:// (issue #1146)
The USB_DEVICE_PARTED_LABEL=gpt setting is now honered while formatting the USB disk (issue #1153)
(Important Note) ReaR 2.00 introduced the 3-digits scripts instead of the 2-digits script. This means all scripts must begin with 3 digits, e.g. 010-my-script.sh instead of 10-my-script. Therefore, if you wrote your own scripts make sure to renumber these. You could also use the make validate to check this.
Bareos support: add missing directory /var/run/bareos in recovery system (issue #1148)
Forbid BACKUP_URL=usb for BACKUP_TYPE=incremental/differential (issues #1141 and #1145)
Improved and added new example configurations (issue #1068, #1058)
Modified/Improved the exit code messages of ReaR (issues #1089, #1133)
Fix documentation regarding OUTPUT_URL=null (issues #734, #1130)
Better and fail safe progress messages while tar backup restore (issue #1116)
Implement simulation mode with simulation with the workflows validate and shell (issue #1098)
Update 11-multiple-backups.adoc : Multiple backups are in general not supported for BACKUP_TYPE=incremental or BACKUP_TYPE=differential (issues #1074 and #1123)
Using RUNTIME_LOGFILE in all scripts as needed (issue #1119)
New Backup method was added - BORG (issues #1030, #1037, #1046, #1048, #1118)
Multiple backups are now possible (issues #1088, #1102, #1096) - see the documentation page (New)
Support partitioning and formatting huge USB devices (issue #1105)
Skip remount async when systemd is used (issue #1097)
Fixed and enhanced code for multiple ISOs (issue #1081)
BACKUP_TYPE=incremental and BACKUP_TYPE=differential were updated (issues #974, #1069)
Added support for setting a UUID on XFS with enabled CRC (RHEL 7) (issue #1065)
Fix for ISO not bootable for SLES11 ppc64 with root LVM (issue #1061)
PXE booting enhancement with new style of uploading the boot files (issue #193)
Renumbering the ReaR scripts from 2-digits to 3-digits (issue #1051)
Improved boot loader detection (issue #1038)
Save bootloader info from POWER architecture and rebuild initrd after migration (issues #1029, #1031)
Improved documentation and man page in general (issues #918, #930, #1004, #1007, #1008)
New SLE12-SP2-btrfs-example.conf file because since SLES12-SP2 btrfs quota setup for snapper via “snapper setup-quota” is needed (issue #999)
Simplified reboot halt poweroff and shutdown in the rescue/recovery system in case of systemd (issue #953)
If TSM parameters contain a dot, the dot is replaced by an underscore in the TSM_SYS variable names (issues #985 and #986)
Check if /dev/disk/by-label/RELAXRECOVER exist (issues #979 and #326)
Added PRE_BACKUP_SCRIPT and POST_BACKUP_SCRIPT to be able to do custom tasks in the mkbackup/mkbackuponly workflows (issue #977)
Make TMPDIR work in compliance with Unix standards (issue #969)
USE_STATIC_NETWORKING now really overrides USE_DHCLIENT (issue #964)
Make it safe against wrong btrfs subvolumes on SLES12 (issues #963, #966)
Encrypted incremental backup cannot read the tar label (issue #952)
Introduction of the NETWORKING_PREPARATION_COMMANDS variable to prepare network setup in the rescue/recovery system (issue #960)
After migration fs_uuid for root partition was not changed in ELILO config file /etc/elilo.conf (issue #956)
Clarified rear man page and default.conf file around BACKUP_URL=rsync: (issues #930 and #918)
Make “rear recover” work with default btrfs on SLES12-SP2 (issue #944)
Dropped GRUB_SUPERUSER and GRUB_RESCUE_PASSWORD to avoid that GRUB_RESCUE could change the behaviour of the GRUB2 bootloader in the currently running system in unexpected ways. With the new optional GRUB_RESCUE_USER setting GRUB_RESCUE works in compliance with the existing GRUB2 configuration (issues #938, #942)
Bail out if not enough disk space for GRUB and GRUB2 rescue image (issue #913)
Use BACKUP_PROG_COMPRESS_OPTIONS as an array so that one can use it to provide more complex values (issue #904)
Add /usr/lib/syslinux/bios to the search path for mbr.bin (issue #908)
Always load modules in /etc/modules (issue #905)
Ask user for EFI partition size on USB disk (issue #849)
Insure /etc/rear/mappings directory exists before doing a recovery (issue #861)
First steps for rescue/recovery system update support via RECOVERY_UPDATE_URL (issue #841)
NFS mount points are not recreated after a recover (issue #818)
Correcting ReaR return code handling in auto recover mode (issue #893)
Added NFSv4 support for security ‘sys’ only so far (issue #754)
Changed the usage of ‘rpcinfo -p’ a bit to have the same outcome of different Linux flavours (issue #889)
RSYNC: /boot/efi needs –relative rsync option (issue #871)
New variables added for Bareos: BAREOS_RESTORE_JOB and BAREOS_FILESET
Multipath partition not found in rhel7.2 (issue #875)
Adding support for ppc64le PowerNV (non-virtualized aka Bare-Metal) (issue #863)
First steps to support new ftpfs BACKUP_URL scheme (issue #845)
Clean up ‘url_host()’ (issue #856)
Fix that libaio (needed for multipath) could be missing in rescue/recovery system because libaio can be located in different directories (issue #852)
Improved the Relax-and-Recover menu for GRUB2 (issues #844, #849, #850)
Check for valid BACKUP_URL schemes (issue #842)
USB UEFI boot support (issue #831)
Mitigate the problem that btrfs subvolums are not restored by default via TSM (issue #833)
Determine EFI virtual disk size automatically (issue #816)
ebiso image size is too small if BACKUP=TSM (issue #811)
Improving the logics around ebiso usage in UEFI mode (issue #801)
Fix for wrong UUID in initrd for bootfs (issues #649 and #851)
Support was added for NVME SSD type of disk devices (issue #787)
For LUKS added the password libraries (issue #679)
Script 99_sysreqs.sh was added to save the minimal system requirements necessary for cloning a system in a remote DRP data center (issue #798)
New 99_move_away_restored_files.sh to remove restored files after recover (issue #799) New array was introduced to make this - BACKUP_RESTORE_MOVE_AWAY_FILES=()
Improved 40-start-udev-or-load-modules.sh script for better udevd handling (issue #766)
Run ldconfig -X before dhclient gets started at boot time (issue #772)
Remove the “-c3” option fron rsyslogd start-up (issue #773)
Add example configuration for NetBackup Master/Media server
Added backup capabilities; getcap and setcap are used to backup and restore (issue #771)
Correct bash syntax so ReaR is compatible with bash v3 and v4 (issue #765, #767)
Added support for new backup method Novastor NovaBACKUP DC (BACKUP=NBKDC) (issue #669)
Code was improved to have network teaming support (issue #655)
Example configuration to put backup and rescue image on same ISO image, eg. DVD (issue #430)
Improved the ReaR documentation
remove the noatime mount option for cifs mount (issue #752)
Replace option ‘grep -P’ to ‘grep -E’ due to SELinux errors (issues #565, #737)
Hidding the encryption key while doing the restore in the rear.log (issue #749)
is_true function was to uniform the different ways of enable/disble variable settings (issue #625)
Added and use sysctl.conf; rescue mode should honor these settings (issue #748)
The BACKUP_PROG_COMPRESS variable was not used during incremental backup (issue #743)
prevent any other workflow in REAR rescue mode then recover (issue #719)
Exclude Oracle ASM device directory from Rescue System (issue #721)
SaveBashFlagsAndOptions and RestoreBashFlagsAndOptions in usr/share/rear/lib/framework-functions.sh were added (issue #700)
/mnt/local became a global variable TARGET_FS_ROOT (issue #708)
Copy rear.log from recovery into /var/log/rear/recovery/ directory after a ‘rear recover’ (issue #706)
wipefs will be used when available (issue #649)
SAN related improvements with btrfs (issue #695)
Support for shim.efi (UEFI booting) added (issue #702)
Added support for elilo (used by SLES 11/12) (issue #583, #691, #692, #693)
Added the –debugscripts command line option (help-workflow) (issue #688)
Removed dosfslabel as required program for vfat UEFI boot partition (issue #694)
Bareos team added BAREOS_FILESET and ISO_DEFAULT to default.conf (for automated DR tests executed by Bareos team; issues #686, #719)
Fix getty/agetty with upstart (issue #685)
New SLE11-SLE12-SAP-HANA-UEFI-example.conf (issue #683)
usr/share/rear/conf/examples/SLE12-SP1-btrfs-example.conf added as an example configuration file
Added support for the SUSE specific gpt_sync_mbr partitioning scheme (issue #544)
Improved btrfs snapshot support with SLES 12 (issue #556)
Unload scsi_debug driver in recovery mode for RHEL 7.1 (issue #626)
Saved the current mount points and permissions; in order to improve and avoid missing mount points after recovery (issue #619)
NSR servername not defined causing ReaR to hang (issue #637)
Removed mingetty as a required package (issue #661)
Adding -scrollprompt=no to dsmc query in script verify/TSM/default/40_verify_tsm.sh (issue #667)
Fixed a bug around USB_DEVICE and OUTPUT_URL mis-match (issue #579)
grub support for ppc64 (issue #673)
grub2 supported was added for ppc64 (issue #672)
ppc64le support was added into the rear.spec (issue #665)
Network code partially rewritten to improve teaming (issue #662)
Changed default value of USE_CFG2HTML from 1 to empty (means do not run cfg2html by default) (issue #643)
Move the 50_selinux_autorelabel.sh script to the default location so it gets picked up by all backup methods. This was required for RHEL 7 (issue #650)
Check via NSR if the ISO image is not obsolete (issue #653)
Added ebiso support within ReaR (required for UEFI booting with SLES 11 & 12 (issue #657)
FDR/Upstream (BACKUP=FDRUPSTREAM) (New) (issue #659)
Several fixed required to the Debian packaging rules needed so it builds correctly on OBS
Fixed the NTP startup script (issue #641)
Fixed the vfat label issue (issue #647)
Improved the DUPLICITY method with finding all required libraries and python scripts
Added the /run directory to the list of recreating missing directories (issue #619)
Fix issue with USB disk and rsync as internal backup program (issue #645)
Fix rsync restore: –anchored invalid rsync option (issue #642)
A new variable was introduced NSR_POOLNAME (issue #640)
/tmp/ to $TMP_DIR/ (issue #607)
Related to security recommendations for Fedora and RHEL:
Move nfs-client from depends to recommends in Debian control file (issue #633)
In packaging/rpm/rear.spec replaced “BuildArch: noarch” with “ExclusiveArch: %ix86 x86_64 ppc ppc64” that should tell the user that ReaR is known to work only on %ix86 x86_64 ppc ppc64 and removed “Requires: yaboot” for ppc ppc64 because that is the default installed bootloader on ppc ppc64 (issues #629 and #631)
Support the Oracle Linux 6 ksplice module (issue #605)
In script 27_hpraid_layout.sh added the missing HPSSACLI_BIN_INSTALLATION_DIR variable to the COPY_AS_IS array (issue #630)
Modified the packaging Makefile and rules for debian to fix the failing OBS Debian builds (issue #604)
Syslinux version > 5.00 is now supported (ISO and USB output) - works on Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.04 (issue #624)
Bail out when syslinux/modules are not found in lib/bootloader-functions.sh (issues #467 and #596)
You could also define a variable SYSLINUX_MODULES_DIR if ReaR cannot find it automatically (should not be necessary)
Support was added for SLES11 on PPC64 hardware (issues #616 and #628)
Support was added for new hardware - PPC64LE - RHEL and Ubuntu (issue #627)
FIX the hashed password (SSH_ROOT_PASSWORD variable) and added a missing library libfreeblpriv3 (issue #560)
Insert a 3 seconds sleep after a volume group restauration to give udevd or systemd-udevd time to create needed devices (issue #608 and #617)
Variable MANUAL_INCLUDE=YES has been introduced to work with array BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE (issue #597)
Add new variable NSR_DEFAULT_POOL_NAME (defaulting to Default) to use a different default pool name. Renamed the RETENTION_TIME variable to NSR_RETENTION_TIME (issue #640)
ReaR website shows the user guide which is part of the ReaR software (linked to GitHub)
new document 10-integrating-external-backup.adoc which explains the steps to take for a new backup integration into ReaR
Removed the plain password in the logs (and output) coming from BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY to avoid crib (issue #568)
Mount vfat file system without special mount options seems to work much better then with these options in recovery mode, therefore, we do not use these anymore (especially for /boot/efi) (issue #576)
Elilo support has been added for SLES (not fully tested yet) - issue #583
Grub2 rescue menu has been added (enable this feature with GRUB_RESCUE=y) - issue #589
splitted script 31_include_uefi_tools.sh in two pieces: 31_include_uefi_tools.sh: to grab the UEFI tools (as long as /boot/efi is mounted), and 32_include_uefi_env.sh: to dig deeper into the configuration when UEFI is active (related to issue #214)
This is necessary to have to UEFI tools on SLES 11/12 where we cannot create an UEFI bootable ISO image. We must boot in BIOS mode, and need the UEFI tools to make the system bootable over UEFI.
It is now possible to format an USB disk with a vfat and ext3 partition (for UEFI booting) - issue #593
rear -v format -- --efi /dev/<usbdevice>
Simplified the code for ext* fs and added StopIfError calls to prevent divide by zero during recovery (issue #598)
Syslinux version >6 requires some special handling due to splitting up the package (Ubuntu 15.04) (issue #584)
Debian 8 support added with ISO booting with latest syslinux release as well (issues #596, #599 and #600)
Changed the behavior of SSH_ROOT_PASSWORD - now saved as MD5 hash password, but backwards compatibility is still respected (issue #560)
For EMC NetWorker server/client we added some exclude items to COPY_AS_IS_EXCLUDE_NSR (issue #571)
Removed the Warning message from main usr/sbin/rear script as it was misleading (issues #563 and #564)
output/ISO/Linux-i386/80_create_isofs.sh: make sure ISO_FILES[@] are copied to isofs directory (issue #569)
Relax-and-Recover works on GNU/Linux kernel with version 2.6 and higher. For lower kernel versions Relax-and-Recover cannot be used, and for these systems, mkcdrec is still a good alternative.
As Relax-and-Recover has been solely written in the bash language we need the bash shell which is standard available on all GNU/Linux based systems. The default backup program Relax-and-Recover uses is GNU/tar which is also standard available.
Relax-and-Recover is known to work well on x86, x86_64 and ppc64(le) based architectures.
Relax-and-Recover has also been ported to ia64 and arm architectures, but
these are less tested. Use the ‘rear validate’ command after every
successful DR test please and mail us the results.
The default backup program with Relax-and-Recover is (BACKUP_PROG=tar)
GNU tar and the default compression used with tar is gzip. However, is
using gzip the best choice? We have done some tests and published the
results. See
Relax-and-Recover compression tests
Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) is an Open Source project under GPL v3 license which means it is free to use and modify. However, the creators of ReaR have spend many, many hours in development and support. We will only give free of charge support in our free time (and when work/home balance allows it).
That does not mean we let our user basis in the cold as we do deliver support as a service (not free of charge).
We try to keep our wiki page Test Matrix rear 2.5 up-to-date with feedback we receive from the community.
ReaR-2.5 is supported on the following Linux based operating systems:
ReaR-2.5 dropped official support for the following Linux based operating systems:
ReaR-2.5 and ReaR-2.4 (and probably also some earlier versions) are known to no longer work reasonably well for the following Linux based operating systems:
If you require support for unsupported Linux Operating System you must acquire a ReaR support contract.
Requests to port ReaR to another Operating System (not Linux) can only be achieved with serious sponsoring.
ReaR-2.5 is supported on:
ReaR-2.5 may or may not work on:
ReaR-2.5 does not support:
If you feel the need to get a fully functional ReaR working on one of the above mentioned type of processors please buy consultancy from one of our official developers.
ReaR has a long history (since 2006) and we cannot support all released versions. If you have a problem we urge you to install the latest stable ReaR version or the development version (available on GitHub) before submitting an issue.
However, we do understand that it is not always possible to install on hundreds of systems the latest version so we are willing to support previous versions of ReaR if you buy a support contract. Why do we change our policy? We cannot handle the big support requests anymore and we must give paid projects priority, therefore, we urge our customers to buy a support contract for one or more systems. You buy time with our core developers.
Issue Description: ‘rear’ package on Ubuntu 14.04 depends on isolinux package (which does not exist)
Read the comments in issue #1403
Issue Description: tar –test-label is not supported on Centos 5 who have tar version 1.15
Read the comments in issue #1014
Issue Description: BACKUP=NSR on RHEL 6 could break yum
Issue #387 describes a problem seen on RHEL 6 where when rear uses NSR and afterwards the link /lib64/libexpat.so.1 has been changed.
So far there is no workaround for this issue.
Issue Description: usage of an alternative configuration directory is different in mkbackup or recover mode
Using rear -v -c /etc/rear/mydir mkbackup works fine in production, but when you try (once booted from rescue image) rear -v -c /etc/rear/mydir recover it will fail.
The configuration files are copied to /etc/rear/ into the rescue image, so you need to type: rear -v recover
See issue #512
Issue Description: Is there a possibility to add btrfs subvolume to a rsync backup
At present (release 1.18) there is no workaround in place. If you happen to know how this could be fixed then add your ideas to issue #417
Issue Description: UEFI ISO booting does not work on openSUSE 12.x, or SLES 11/12
At present (release 1.18.x and higher) genisoimage cannot produce ISO images that can boot via UEFI on an openSUSE distribution (and also SLES). However, use the ebiso package instead to create UEFI ISO images on SLES.
Issue Description: System reconfiguration still has some weaknesses.
this has to be tested before relying on it, there are too many unknowns involved so that we cannot guarantee anything in this area. It has been developed mostly as a P2V tool to migrate HP servers to VMware Vms
hard disks need to be at least of the same size and amount as in the original system, ATM this is a simple 1:1 mapping of old to new disks, there is no removal of RAID groups or merging of smaller disks onto a bigger one or making stuff smaller.
any use of /dev/disk/by-path or /dev/disk/by-id is untested and will most likely not work. In some cases Relax-and-Recover will print a warning, but we are not able to detect all cases. Typically this leads to unbootable systems or bad /etc/fstab files
Issue Description: If SELinux is not disabled during backup (variable
BACKUP_SELINUX_DISABLE= in /etc/rear/local.conf) then we might see
errors in the rear-$(hostname).log file such as:
tar: var/cache/yum/i386/15/updates/packages: Cannot setfilecon: No such file or directory
Make sure the BACKUP_URL destination understands extended attributes
(CIFS is out of the question and NFS is problematic). When using local
disks (or external USB devices) make sure the proper mount options are
given in the BACKUP_OPTIONS variable, e.g.:
BACKUP_OPTIONS="rw,relatime,seclabel,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered"
(TIP) BACKUP_SELINUX_DISABLE=1 variable has been introduced in the
/usr/share/rear/conf/default.conf file to disable SELinux
while the backup is running (default setting).
Issue Description: ERROR: FindStorageDrivers called but STORAGE_DRIVERS is empty
Above error message might be seen after a fresh installation of the GNU/Linux kernel. ReaR got confused between the running kernel version number and the actual fresh kernel available.
Reboot your server before using ReaR again, which is a good practice anyway after upgrading the GNU/Linux kernel.