Hi,
I am running Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33.5-112-2.2 kernel, and am trying to make an ISO image of my hard disk for other use. Unfortunately "mkisofs" failed because /proc/kcore exceeded its 4GB file size limit. In fact, the size of the kcore on my system is shown to be 128TB, and the machine itself only contains 2GB of RAM. Has anyone experienced the same problem? BTW, the kcore files on my redhat machines reflect the actual RAM size as it should be. Also, does anyone know why "mkisofs" even tries to copy a virtual file into the ISO image it is creating?
Thanks, H Chen
On 07/12/2010 11:24 AM, Chen, Helen Y wrote:
Hi,
I am running Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33.5-112-2.2 kernel, and am trying to make an ISO image of my hard disk for other use. Unfortunately "mkisofs" failed because /proc/kcore exceeded its 4GB file size limit. In fact, the size of the kcore on my system is shown to be 128TB, and the machine itself only contains 2GB of RAM. Has anyone experienced the same problem? BTW, the kcore files on my redhat machines reflect the actual RAM size as it should be. Also, does anyone know why "mkisofs" even tries to copy a virtual file into the ISO image it is creating?
All 64-bit systems show 128TB of kcore, as that's the limit the 64-bit chipset can handle and kcore is set up to map the maximum memory.
If you're imaging your system for a DVD or whatever, you shouldn't image any of the virtual filesystems (/proc or /sys) or any hardware devices (/dev) in the first place. Use something like:
genisoimage -m "/proc/*" -m "/sys/*" -m "/dev/*" -m core ...
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Chen, You NEVER EVER want to include /proc, /sys, /tmp, /media, /dev in your backup/iso. They're not really files but points to other systems data, or your kernel's internal structures.
If you're on a 64bit machines, then yes - the "virtual" size of these files can be quite large. That's normal. They're not meant to be written/read by normal processes. So simply exclude the non persistent mount points, temporary and "cd/usb" mount points when you do a system dump like that.
Hi,
try to boot a live cd and use dd command.
dd if=/dev/sdX of=sdX.img
2010/7/12 Chen, Helen Y hycsw@sandia.gov
Hi,
I am running Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33.5-112-2.2 kernel, and am trying to make an ISO image of my hard disk for other use. Unfortunately “mkisofs” failed because /proc/kcore exceeded its 4GB file size limit. In fact, the size of the kcore on my system is shown to be 128TB, and the machine itself only contains 2GB of RAM. Has anyone experienced the same problem? BTW, the kcore files on my redhat machines reflect the actual RAM size as it should be. Also, does anyone know why “mkisofs” even tries to copy a virtual file into the ISO image it is creating?
Thanks, H Chen
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Chen, Helen Y:
I am running Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33.5-112-2.2 kernel, and am trying to make an ISO image of my hard disk for other use.
Rick Stevens:
genisoimage -m "/proc/*" -m "/sys/*" -m "/dev/*" -m core ...
It's probably worth pointing this out: Do you really want an ISO image of your system? Because it's going to be missing important file attributes (permissions, ownership & SELinux contexts, at least, and probably links, too).
Chen, Helen Y wrote:
Hi,
I am running Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33.5-112-2.2 kernel, and am trying to make an ISO image of my hard disk for other use. Unfortunately “mkisofs” failed because /proc/kcore exceeded its 4GB file size limit. In fact, the size of the kcore on my system is shown to be 128TB, and the machine itself only contains 2GB of RAM. Has anyone experienced the same problem? BTW, the kcore files on my redhat machines reflect the actual RAM size as it should be. Also, does anyone know why “mkisofs” even tries to copy a virtual file into the ISO image it is creating?
If "other use" means non-Linux, you will have to exclude the things others have mentioned. You will lose some information going to ISO-9669 format, you may not care. If you want a real backup, loop mount a 4G file with an ext2 and copy everything to that, preserving ownership, etc. Then unmount and burn to a DVD. Linux will be happy to mount an ext2 DVD and all permissions and ACLs will be preserved.
Note, I'm just typing this in, engage brain before copying! # cd /tmp # dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=4k of=bkup.ext2 # mke2fs [options] bkup.ext2 # mount -o loop bkup.ext2 /mnt/loop # for n in / /boot /home; do cp -ax $n /mnt/loop/; done # umount /mnt/loop # growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=bkup.ext2
I do similar stuff, although if I really care about the data, I often make the loop file smaller so I can add dvdisaster software ECC to the image.
hth