Forum archive
TKLBAM - Perfect migration? Or not?
I used TKLBAM to migrate my TKL LAMP 12.x to TKL LAMP 13.0. It works really great for stuff like authentication info, databases, general apache settings, SSL certificates and stuff like that, but some key stuff was left out, such as AWS-CLI as well as anything in the root directory. I don't know about anyone else, but as an older guy, the root directory / is where I put a lot of my core little files for my spaghetti hack-like stuff. I found a full backup using TKLBAM seems to miss these add-ons. Is there an explanation for this? Does TKL LAMP 13.0 simply not properly allow the migration of some things from 12.x? Or does the process simply not include certain tools/directories? It was my understanding that TKLBAM is a bulletproof 'ninja-like' Magicalicious migration tool. :) I am still able to recover from these limited migrations, but they sure don't seem to be perfect. Any thoughts to help my understanding of TKLBAM are welcome! Thanks, Rick.
Replies (6)
TKLBAM is highly configurable...
Reply 1Thanks for the feedback! :)
Reply 2In some contexts it does "just work". I.e. if you launch say a Drupal server; configure your Drupal website how you want and then run a backup it will "just work"! It's only once you start customising it in "non-standard ways" (for our somewhat simplistic TurnKey model) that it fails to "just work" as you might like. But do I get your point. Perhaps it's a little too much hyperbole "marketing speak"...!? :)
FWIW it does do an inventory of any packages that you have installed from Debian (or TurnKey) repositories and will reinstall (and reconfigure) those to how you had them configured. It doesn't reinstall software installed from 3rd party repos though, nor other software installed from alternative sources.
Perhaps we need to consider some sort of (optional) first use walkthrough which allows you to configure TKLBAM to your specific usage scenario? Maybe it could suggest additional places to include?
Do you have any specific suggestion on what TKLBAM "should" or might include (by default or by suggestion)? I would love to hear... Once we have it nailed down a little more I'll create a "feature request" on our issue tracker.
Ahhhh!!
Reply 3Okay, thanks Jeremy. Good to know. Although I love TKL and appreciate the work that has gone into these fantastic tools, I think the website is somewhat misleading. I honestly think it leads people to believe that a backup and/or migration would be full and total without having to 'check' to see that everything is backed up and/or migrated. The term "it just works" doesn't really apply then, as far as I see it, if you have to assume special configuration for every tool you end up using, take an inventory of everything you've ever installed, and do an inventory after you've restored. Just my two cents, but it is possible that I am just a little extra naive when it comes to claims.
With great respect :)
Rick
That's not what I thought... :)
Reply 4Actually, no, I didn't think the file WOULD contain the full OS image. But I did think the whole OS image was basically compared with the original image of the original appliance, and all the changes included. Like a system wide differential compared to the original appliance image, or (gulp!) a differential backup of the entire system by 'after the original appliance image publish date' ?? Would that really be that big?
I honestly thought that's how it worked. (hides head in hindsight shame and limps off the field...)
Thanks for your insight
Reply 5Maybe just a little disclaimer where a newbie would see it explaining that the magic doesn't include 3rd party installs and non-linux-native working directories, that it is not a 'perfect change image'
That sounds like a pretty good idea. Although TBH it should be fairly clear that a 50-100MB (or less) backup file isn't going to contain a full OS image. Although obviously not clear enough! :)
Thanks! :)
Hmmm... Good question!
Reply 6Well, to be honest, I don't know enough about Linux to be able to continue the conversation. Once I ran into all of this, I did see that 'most' things were restored. All of my appliance stuff did work great. It is the simplest (LAMP), so just knowing MYSQL, PHP and APACHE got migrated properly with all of the authentication info (and SSL, thank god) intact was great. And permissions and user data is the most important. As far as the other stuff goes, knowing what I know now, I can easily keep a record of everything else I need to install (because I KNOW HOW haha). The beauty of the TKL-LAMP is that I tried for weeks to get a working version on my own before I tried TKL and it just worked. For a newbie, just getting apache and MySql up and running (especially with SSL) was just TOOOO much... so being able to migrate to an upgrade is honestly good enough for me. By the sounds of it, trying to get TKLBAM to migrate and maintain 3rd party installs like AWS Tools might make it more complex than it needs to be? I mean, if it wasn't done in the first place, there must be a reason. Maybe just a little disclaimer where a newbie would see it explaining that the magic doesn't include 3rd party installs and non-linux-native working directories, that it is not a 'perfect change image' backup/migration. Something just enough that a newbie blind-runner like me will know that there is more work to the 3rd party migration than meets the eye. My problem wasn't so much getting all of the extraneous stuff migrated, it was that I didn't know it wasn't migrated in the first place. I just thought it DID migrate, but just didn't work. haha.
If you think that there are things that are missing then you can configure it to include them! :)
With things like AWS-CLI you have the option to either just include the specific file/files in your backup (see the man pages for guidance). Or you could create a restore hook to check if it's installed already (in the case of a TKLBAM restore to an existing server) and install it if it isn't (in the case of a migration to a new server).