Backup your server

Step 3 `restore`

It's been a while since I've had to restore a backup, so bear with me.

To restore a backup, you have to have some kind of minimal OS to transfer the backup from your backup medium to the live machine, a LIVE machine (eg, no faulty hardware), and your backups themselves.

For the minimal OS, I use the same CD that I used to install FreeBSD. Sysinstall has a "Fixit" mode to restore backups. If you have non-standard hardware, you may need to create your own custom bootable disk. This will not be covered in this article, but it basically consists of creating a barebones kernel and putting it on a bootable disk. Note: A VERY minimal FreeBSD 5.4 kernel is around 2.3MB, meaning it won't fit on a single floppy.

So basically, if the poop hits the fan (ger ger ger), you boot from your CD, enter "Fixit" mode, mount your harddrive, and then run the restore command.

I believe you have to mount and unmount the partitions that you're restoring one at a time. Also, your partition tables must be clean, meaning you may have to use `bsdlabel` to fix your partitions.

Restore command:
(after mounting a clean partition and changing to the directory of the destination partition)
restore vrf /dev/da0


Please note that it's possible to restore parts (individual files or directories) of backups created using dump if you need to.