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Release Notes for Relax-and-Recover version 2.6

This document contains the release notes for the open source project
Relax-and-Recover.

Relax-and-Recover website

GitHub project

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/

Overview

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.

Product Features

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:

  o Hot maintenance capability. A recovery/rescue image can be made online
    while the system is running

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Selected Hardware RAID and (eg. HP SmartArray) and mirroring solutions
    (eg. DRBD) are supported

  o NVME and mmcblk disks are supported

  o LVM root volumes are supported

  o Multipath support for SAN storage

  o UEFI support (including UEFI USB booting)

  o Integrates with internal backup programs such as:

      - GNU tar (BACKUP=NETFS, BACKUP_PROG=tar)
      - GNU tar (BACKUP=NETFS, BACKUP_PROG=tar, BACKUP_TYPE=incremental,
        FULLBACKUPDAY="Mon") for using incremental backups with a weekly full
        backup. Be aware, old tar archives will not be removed automatically!
      - GNU tar (BACKUP=NETFS, BACKUP_PROG=tar, BACKUP_TYPE=differential,
        FULLBACKUPDAY="Mon") for using differential backups with a weekly
        full backup. Be aware, old tar archives will not be removed
        automatically!
      - GNU tar with openssl encryption (BACKUP=NETFS, BACKUP_PROG=tar,
        BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_ENABLED=1)
      - rsync on local devices (BACKUP=NETFS, BACKUP_PROG=rsync), such USB
        and local disks
      - rsync over the network (BACKUP=RSYNC, BACKUP_PROG=rsync)
      - Multiple backup methods (read the documentation)
      - Any partition (e.g. a Windows partition) via BACKUP=BLOCKCLONE. See
        the documention about BLOCKCLONE
      - BACKUP=ZYPPER is SLES12 only (Experimental)
      - BACKUP=YUM is for RedHat architectures ony (Experimental)
  o Integrates with external backup solutions such as:

      - Tivoli Storage Manager (BACKUP=TSM)
      - Data Protector (BACKUP=DP)
      - Symantec NetBackup (BACKUP=NBU)
      - Galaxy 5, 6, and 7 (BACKUP=GALAXY)
      - Galaxy 10 [Commvault Simpana] (BACKUP=GALAXY10)
      - Bacula (BACKUP=BACULA)
      - Bareos (BACKUP=BAREOS) (A fork of Bacula)
      - Rsync Backup Made Easy (BACKUP=RBME)
      - Duplicity/Duply (BACKUP=DUPLICITY)
      - EMC Networker, also known as Legato (BACKUP=NSR)
      - EMC Avamar (BACKUP=AVA)
      - SEP Sesam (BACKUP=SESAM)
      - FDR/Upstream (BACKUP=FDRUPSTREAM)
      - Novastor NovaBACKUP DC (BACKUP=NBKDC)
      - Borg Backup (BACKUP=BORG)
      - Rubrik Cloud Data Management (BACKUP=CDM) (New)
  o Integrates with Disaster Recovery Linux Manager (DRLM)

  o Udev support (except for some really ancient udev versions) which is the
    base for many important features:

      - kernel drivers for network cards and storage adapters are loaded via
        udev
      - deal with network persistent names in udev rules
      - firmware loading
      - persistent storage device names (though Relax-and-Recover does
        nothing with this)
  o Systemd support for the more recent Linux distributions

  o System migration and reconfiguration ('MIGRATION_MODE')

      - facilitate recovery on hardware, that is not the same as the original
        system
      - network and storage drivers are adjusted
      - map hard disks if they do not match (e.g. hda -> sda)
      - remap network MAC addresses
      - use another IP address, or using dhcp via templates or from kernel
        command line
      - rebuild the initial ramdisk if needed (for new storage drivers)
      - migration to SAN storaged
  o Support backup software: Bacula, both locally attached tapes (with
    bextract) and network-based backups. Also, in combination with OBDR
    tapes.

  o Create OBDR tapes with method mkbackup and put the backup onto the tape
    to have a single-tape bootable recovery solution

  o Label the OBDR tape with the method format to avoid accidental overwrites
    with OBDR

  o 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).

  o 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

  o USE_STATIC_NETWORKING=y, will cause statically configured network
    settings to be applied even when USE_DHCLIENT is in effect

  o Save layout and compare layouts for automation of making
    Relax-and-Recover snapshots (checklayout option)

  o 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

  o VLAN tagging, teaming and bridge support

  o Add timestamp of ReaR run with rc code to the syslog or messages file;
    sending mail report is also possible

  o The possibility to backup any partition (in particular a Windows
    partition) via the BACKUP type BLOCKCLONE

  o Unattended ReaR recovery has been improved

  o Improved security model related to SSH keys

      - SSH_FILES='avoid_sensitive_files' (see details in /usr/share/rear/
        conf/default.conf)
      - SSH_UNPROTECTED_PRIVATE_KEYS='no' (see details in /usr/share/rear/
        conf/default.conf)

NOTE: Features marked Experimental are prone to change with future releases.

Relax-and-Recover 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.

Version 2.6 (June 2020)

Abstract

New features, bigger enhancements, and possibly backward incompatible
changes:

  o Initial preliminary first basic support for IBM Z architecture "s390x"
    (a.k.a. "z Systems", formerly "System/390", simply called "s390") :
    Currently primarily for Red Hat and SUSE enterprise systems so that
    interested users can try out early how far things work in their
    particular IBM Z environments and provide feedback preferably plus needed
    fixes, adaptions, and enhancements to ReaR upstream at https://github.com
    /rear/rear (issues #2137 #2142).

  o New BACKUP=CDM method to support Rubrik Cloud Data Management (CDM): The
    Rubrik CDM backup and restore method for ReaR allows Rubrik CDM to
    perform bare metal recovery of Linux systems. It does this by including
    the Rubrik CDM RBS agent files in the ReaR recovery system so that during
    rear recover the Rubrik CDM RBS agent can be used to restore from Rubrik
    CDM (issue #2248).

  o New use-case for BLOCKCLONE backup method with the "multiple backups"
    approach for a more complex LUKS setup with different passphrases or
    keys: The usual support for LUKS-encrypted filesystems means that during
    reare recover a new encrypted filesystem will be created with new
    encryption keys. To recover the exact LUKS setup including its keys from
    the original system it is now possible to use the "multiple backups"
    approach by first ignoring the encrypted filesystem during the "base
    system" phase, and then using a second BLOCKCLONE phase with a dd image
    that contains the encrypted filesystem. The new config variable
    BLOCKCLONE_TRY_UNMOUNT is needed here: It will try to unmount the
    encrypted filesystem before creating its image and before restoring it
    (issue #2200).

  o Initial draft implementation of the new 'mountonly' workflow to use ReaR
    as rescue system, therein mount the filesystems of the target system so
    that one can manually repair it. This is described in doc/user-guide/
    04-scenarios.adoc (issue #2247).

  o Enable creation of non consecutive partitions. parted is not capable of
    creating non-consecutive partitions. To still be able to do so, the trick
    consists in creating dummy partitions to fill the gaps between partition
    numbers. Allocation of these dummy partitions is done from the end of the
    target partition, because parted is not capable of resizing a partition
    from the beginning (issues #2081 #1793 #1771 #1681).

  o Improved handling of partition label type for multipath disks plus
    including of multipath disks in backup (unless AUTOEXCLUDE_MULTIPATH is
    true). Now the partition label type for multipath devices (same as is
    already done for normal disks) is stored in 'multipath' entries in
    disklayout.conf so that the syntax of those entries changed and that new
    syntax is now documented in doc/user-guide/06-layout-configuration.adoc
    (issues #2234 #2236).

  o The config variable WAIT_SECS default value was aligned with the
    USER_INPUT_TIMEOUT default value so that now the default timeout for user
    input is always 300 seconds. The former WAIT_SECS default value of 30
    seconds was too short because the 'read -t' timeout interrupts ongoing
    user input. The timeout must be sufficiently long for the user to read
    and understand the possibly unexpected user input request message and
    then some more time to make a decision what to enter and finally even
    more time to enter the right value (issue #2257).

  o Enhanced default AUTOEXCLUDE_PATH=( /media /run /mnt /tmp ) to
    automatically exclude temporarily mounted things (e.g. USB devices)
    because mountpoints for temporarily mounted things are usually
    sub-directories below /media /run (like /run/media) /mnt and /tmp (issue
    #2239).

  o Now we have CLONE_ALL_USERS_GROUPS="true" by default. See the explanation
    in default.conf what that means. (issue #2345)

  o Replaced grub-mkimage with more sophisticated grub-mkstandalone when
    building GRUB2 image for using GRUB2 as recovery system UEFI bootloader
    (issue #2293).

Details (mostly in chronological order - newest topmost):

  o Added DHCP auto-configuration for Network Manager (Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop):
    While ReaR supports DHCP auto-detection during 'rear mkrescue' of some
    DHCP setups, the Network Manager flavor on Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop was not
    supported so DHCP for the recovery system was not auto-enabled there
    (issue #2427).

  o OPALPBA (OUTPUT=RAWDISK): Workaround for EFI firmware glitch which
    prevents booting the real OS after unlocking SEDs. Symptom: Boot hangs
    when Grub hands over control to the Linux kernel. Seen on an HPE ML10Gen9
    server. The workaround is to add and remove a UEFI 'next boot' entry
    (essentially a no-op) which should convince the EFI firmware to use the
    boot order to determine the effective boot entry for the next boot (issue
    #2425).

  o Update default.conf: Describe LUKS_CRYPTSETUP_OPTIONS usage with some
    examples (issue #2389).

  o Overhauled how SSH config files are parsed for 'IdentityFile' values to
    find (and remove) unprotected SSH keys in the recovery system. Now "find
    ./etc/ssh" ensures that SSH 'Include' config files e.g. in /etc/ssh/
    ssh_config.d/ are also parsed (issue #2421).

  o Update default.conf: Describe usage of non-quoted globbing patterns like
    VAR+=( /directory/* ) versus quoted globbing patterns like VAR+=( '/
    directory/*' ) and also describe how to prepend to an array in contrast
    to append to it (issue #2417).

  o When creating md5sums of the files in the recovery system be safe against
    blanks or special characters in file names by using appropriate options
    for all commands in the pipe (issues #2407 #1372).

  o Evaluate OUTPUT_LFTP_OPTIONS at the beginning of lftp operations. Before
    OUTPUT_LFTP_OPTIONS had been evaluated after connection to destination
    host was established which prohibited using OUTPUT_LFTP_OPTIONS also for
    connection specific settings. Now OUTPUT_LFTP_OPTIONS is moved to the
    beginning of lftp command before any other lftp command is executed
    (issue #2410).

  o For BACKUP=BORG implemented pagination when selecting the Borg archive to
    restore from: During "rear recover" all Borg archives are shown. In case
    of a long list only the last items had been visble to the user. Now
    pagination happens with a configurable number of Borg archives, see
    BORGBACKUP_RESTORE_ARCHIVES_SHOW_MAX in default.conf (issue #2408).

  o For BACKUP=BORG updated generated locale filename from "rear.UTF-8" to
    "en_US.UTF-8" (issue #2402).

  o Use plain ${COPY_AS_IS[*]} instead of quoted "${COPY_AS_IS[@]}" in the
    tar command call that copies things into the recovery system to ensure
    "things work as usually expected" for any methods that are used to add
    elements to the COPY_AS_IS array and better explain in default.conf how
    COPY_AS_IS works, in particular that symlinks cannot be followed and that
    files or directories that contain blanks or other $IFS characters cannot
    be specified (issue #2405).

  o For RAWDISK output add distribution-specific GRUB2 module 'linuxefi.mod'
    otherwise GRUB2 could not boot a UEFI rescue medium on Ubuntu 18.04 or
    20.04 (issue #2419).

  o ReaR was using hard-coded set of Grub2 modules for UEFI boot-loader. New
    GRUB2_MODULES_UEFI and GRUB2_MODULES_UEFI_LOAD config variables for
    installing GRUB2 as recovery system UEFI bootloader so that user can add
    or remove GRUB2 modules as needed (issues #2283 #2293 #2392).

  o No longer load GRUB2 modules efi_gop and efi_uga in function
    create_grub2_cfg : In the create_grub2_cfg function in lib/
    bootloader-functions.sh do no longer enfore loading the GRUB2 modules
    efi_gop and efi_uga because loading only the module all_video is
    sufficient and fail-safe because moddep.lst contains "all_video: efi_gop
    efi_uga" (issue #2388).

  o No longer load video_bochs and video_cirrus by the create_grub2_cfg
    function. In the create_grub2_cfg function in usr/share/rear/lib/
    bootloader-functions.sh that is used in case of UEFI to set up GRUB2 as
    bootloader for the recovery system do no longer let GRUB2 load the
    modules video_bochs and video_cirrus because those are not available as
    GRUB2 modules in case of UEFI (x86_64-efi) and the generic "insmod
    all_video" that is still there should be sufficient for GRUB2 (issue #
    2388).

  o Allow to boot original system from Grub menu (UEFI): This change adds
    following: Possibility to boot original system for UEFI boot with OUTPUT=
    NETFS and OUTPUT=USB (similarly to non UEFI ReaR rescue system). Replaces
    grub-mkimage for building of Grub2 boot image for OUTPUT=USB with
    build_bootx86_efi() (grub-mkstandalone). Replaces separate Grub
    configuration for OUTPUT=USB with create_grub2_cfg(). Using
    build_bootx86_efi() and create_grub2_cfg() in OUTPUT=USB will unify
    process of Grub boot image creation with OUTPUT=NETFS. (issue #2326)

  o Replace grub-mkimage with more sophisticated grub-mkstandalone when
    building GRUB2 image for using GRUB2 as recovery system UEFI bootloader
    (issue #2293).

  o When transferring ReaR recovery system ISO, create also destination
    directory structure (including parents). This is useful because when
    destination directory structure does not exist (or is incomplete), Lftp
    puts files into first available directory in OUTPUT_URL scheme (issue #
    2401).

  o Have CLONE_ALL_USERS_GROUPS="true" by default and explain it in
    default.conf (issue #2345).

  o New OUTPUT_LFTP_OPTIONS config variable for lftp custom parameters (issue
    #2384).

  o Update 950_check_missing_programs.sh: When checking for required programs
    also test for "basename program" because when required programs are
    specified with absolute path those programs appears in the ReaR recovery
    system in /bin/ so testing their original path would falsely fail during
    "rear recover" (issue #2206).

  o New prep/USB//350_safeguard_error_out.sh safeguard scripts to let "rear
    mkrescue/mkbackup" error out in case of false usage of OUTPUT=USB on non
    PC-compatible (non-i386/x86/x86_64) architectures because with OUTPUT=USB
    on those architectures the USB medium cannot be booted (for those
    architectures there are no scripts that install a bootloader) and
    documented that in the OUTPUT=USB section in default.conf (issues #2348 #
    2396).

  o Error out for unsupported workflows in any case: Before init/default/
    050_check_rear_recover_mode.sh did only error out when in the recovery
    system an unsupported workflow should be run. Now it also errors out when
    on the normal/original system an unsupported workflow that is likely
    destructive (in particular recover layoutonly restoreonly finalizeonly
    and mountonly) should be run (issues #2387 #2395).

  o Improve BorgBackup (short: Borg) integration into ReaR: Several
    improvements e.g. error handling, output to logfile etc. (issue #2382).

  o In backup/NETFS/default/500_make_backup.sh add "bs=1M" to SPLIT_COMMAND=
    "dd of=$backuparchive bs=1M" to let 'dd' read and write up to 1MiB at a
    time to speed up things for example from only 500KiB/s (with the 'dd'
    default of 512 bytes) via a 100MBit network connection to about its full
    capacity (issue #2369).

  o Error out during "rear mkrescue/mkbackup" when LUKS version 2 is used
    because LUKS version 2 is not suppported. When LUKS version 2 is used it
    fails at least to determine the hash value so we use an empty hash value
    as a simple test if gathering crypt information was successful and error
    out if not. (issues #2204 #2381)

  o Auto-detect DHCP client with systemd-networkd plus completely overhauled
    and simplified code in prep/GNU/Linux/210_include_dhclient.sh with
    resulting simplification of skel/default/etc/scripts/system-setup.d/
    58-start-dhclient.sh (issue #2375).

  o Filter out duplicate entries in COPY_AS_IS but keep the ordering of the
    elements i.e. only the first occurrence of an element is kept. Also
    remove duplicates in the copy_as_is_filelist_file with 'sort -u' because
    here the ordering does not matter. (issue #2377)

  o Update 250_find_all_libs.sh: Removed unreliably working code that intends
    to filter out duplicates in the LIBS and COPS_AS_IS arrays via echo "$
    {ARRAY[@]}" | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -u | tr '\n' ' ' that fails when array
    elements contain spaces so better code should be used e.g. like printf
    '%s\n' "${ARRAY[@]}" | awk '!seen[$0]++' but filtering out duplicates is
    not needed and by the way cleaned up the whole script a bit. (issue #
    2377)

  o Skip Longhorn Engine replica devices (issue #2373).

  o Update 400_prep_yum.sh: For BACKUP=YUM error out if
    BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_ENABLED is set because BACKUP=YUM does not support
    backup encryption (issue #2374).

  o Fail-safe patching of etc/ssh/sshd_config in the recovery system to
    ensure the needed ReaR settings/overrides actually apply. For example if
    etc/ssh/sshd_config contains a Match section at the end of the file e.g.
    appending "PermitRootLogin yes" will not be effective as a global setting
    but only in the Match section. Therefore now the needed ReaR settings are
    inserted at the beginning and all subsequent entries of that kind are
    disabled (commented out) to ensure that the ReaR global setting is the
    only one that is effective. (issue #2362)

  o Run what was build/default/985_fix_broken_links.sh now earlier as build/
    default/490_fix_broken_links.sh before files get modified in recovery
    system because otherwise e.g. if etc/ssh/sshd_config is a symbolic link
    build/default/500_ssh_setup.sh will fail to apply patches (issue #2360).

  o Use simpler and more fail-safe syntax ARRAY+=( additional elements )
    everywhere (issue #2364).

  o Update 58-start-dhclient.sh: Fixed issue #2354.

  o Added usr/share/rear/restore/OPALPBA/ directory to pass the test for
    $SHARE_DIR/restore/$BACKUP in prep/default/035_valid_backup_methods.sh
    because the mkopalpba workflow uses the nonexistent BACKUP method OPALPBA
    to create a PBA image (issue #2351).

  o Fix OPALPBA: Could not change password on multiple SEDs at once. "rear
    opaladmin changePW" (when used without any extra argument or with
    multiple arguments) is meant to change the disk password on multiple
    self-encrypting drives in a single invocation. However, it stopped after
    successfully changing the password on the first drive and the password of
    subsequent drives had not been changed. (issue #2349)

  o Update 035_valid_backup_methods.sh: Simplified prep/default/
    035_valid_backup_methods.sh to make it work more predictable and
    fail-safe (issue #2353).

  o Have a hardcoded '-iso-level 3' option in output/ISO/Linux-ppc64le/
    820_create_iso_image.sh because it is also hardcoded in output/ISO/
    Linux-i386/820_create_iso_image.sh and it seems to also work in general
    on PPC64LE architecture (issue #2344).

  o Update default.conf: Adapt the explanation in default.conf how
    ISO_MAX_SIZE works (issue #2347).

  o Cleaned up and enhanced the ISO_MAX_SIZE implementation in backup/NETFS/
    default/500_make_backup.sh to make it in particular more safe against
    erroneous settings of the ISO_MAX_SIZE variable (issue #2344).

  o Added required NFS users for proper rpcbind startup: Usually 'rpcuser' is
    used but 'rpc' is used in RHEL7.x and '_rpc' is used in Debian 10 (issues
    #2341 #2342 #2250)

  o Cleaned up and enhanced 320_migrate_network_configuration_files.sh plus
    some bugfixes where the old code presumably did not work. (issues #2310 #
    2313 #2312)

  o Update 890_finish_checks.sh: In the WARNING message at the end of "rear
    recover" when no bootloader could be installed also mention usr/share/
    rear/finalize/Linux-ppc64le/660_install_grub2.sh as an example script how
    one could install a bootloader on POWER architecture. Furthermore since
    finalize/default/110_bind_mount_proc_sys_dev_run.sh it is no longer
    needed to manually mount /proc. (issues #2339 #2045)

  o Update 095_exclude_non_essential_files.sh: Added also /usr/lib/grub2 and
    /usr/share/grub2 to COPY_AS_IS_EXCLUDE because since openSUSE Leap 15.1
    things were moved from /usr/lib/grub2/ to /usr/share/grub2/ (issue #
    2338).

  o Update 270_create_grub2_efi_bootloader.sh: Test for Grub 2 EFI components
    directories /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi and now also for /usr/lib/grub2/
    x86_64-efi or /usr/share/grub2/x86_64-efi because since openSUSE Leap
    15.1 things were moved from /usr/lib/grub2/ to /usr/share/grub2/ (issue #
    2338).

  o Update uefi-functions.sh: Use /usr//grub/x86_64-efi/partmap.lst instead
    of /usr/lib/grub*/x86_64-efi/partmap.lst because since openSUSE Leap 15.1
    things were moved from /usr/lib/grub2/ to /usr/share/grub2/ (issue #
    2338).

  o Update 630_install_grub.sh and 650_install_elilo.sh: Show the actual
    missing directory in the Error message (issue #2337).

  o Moved backup/default/005_valid_backup_methods.sh to prep/default/
    035_valid_backup_methods.sh to also check for valid backup methods during
    "rear mkrescue" because for most external backup methods only "rear
    mkrescue" is used, cf. the section "BACKUP SOFTWARE INTEGRATION" in 'man
    rear' (issue #2337).

  o Changes to Data Protector branding, adjustment required to support the
    new Data Protector 10.x agent with Secure Socket Communication. Fixed
    some problems related to SessionID format and problems with object names
    like host type vs. file system backup (issue #2335).

  o Hard-coded root home directory string ("/root") was replaced with
    $ROOT_HOME_DIR that is the eeal home directory of root user (issue #
    2334).

  o Make USE_DHCLIENT and USE_STATIC_NETWORKING more fail-safe in ReaR
    recovery system (issue #2325).

  o For FDR backups, if the path for $FDRUPSTREAM_DATA_PATH does not exist,
    then create it. This change is FDR specific for s390 and is only in
    effect if ZVM_NAMING is "Y" (issue #2320).

  o Overhauled rescue/default/010_merge_skeletons.sh: Made
    010_merge_skeletons.sh behave more reliably. Now it errors out when
    things really went wrong. Now is is also supported that both a $skel_dir
    directory (e.g. usr/share/rear/skel/default/) plus a $skel_dir.tar.gz
    (e.g. usr/share/rear/skel/default.tar.gz) exist and then both get copied
    into the recovery system, first the directory and then the tar.gz so that
    via the tar.gz files from the $skel_dir directory could be overwritten if
    needed. (issues #2307 #2317)

  o Added $FDRUPSTREAM_DATA_PATH/rear to $COPY_AS_IS_EXCLUDE_FDRUPSTREAM
    (issue #2318).

  o Added documentation about possible (dirty) workarounds for needed
    bind9-export libraries for CentOS 7.7 and 8.0 which is somewhat related
    to Rubrik-CDM (issues #2266 #2284).

  o Enhanced recovery system BIOS boot default settings for USB and ISO: For
    OUTPUT=ISO the user can now explicitly specify what to boot by default
    when booting the ISO on BIOS systems via ISO_DEFAULT="boothd0" to boot
    from the first disk and ISO_DEFAULT="boothd1" to boot from the second
    disk. For OUTPUT=USB the user can now explicitly specify what to boot by
    default when booting the disk on BIOS systems via USB_BIOS_BOOT_DEFAULT=
    "boothd0" to boot from the first disk. The default USB_BIOS_BOOT_DEFAULT=
    "" boots the second disk. (issues #2276 #2303)

  o Remove outdated /root/rear-DATE-TIMESTAMP.log symlinks. Before creating
    the current symlink to the current log file test all files that match the
    file name pattern of such symlinks and remove those already existing
    (old) symlinks where its now outdated symlink target is the current log
    file (issue #2301).

  o Initial preliminary first basic support for IBM Z architecture "s390x"
    (a.k.a. "z Systems", formerly "System/390", simply called "s390") :
    Currently primarily for Red Hat and SUSE enterprise systems so that
    interested users can try out early how far things work in their
    particular IBM Z environments and provide feedback preferably plus needed
    fixes, adaptions, and enhancements to ReaR upstream at https://github.com
    /rear/rear (issues #2137 #2142).

  o Improved 'is_multipath_path' function to be more fail safe that now tests
    (via "multipath -l" output) if multipath is used. Additionally have
    'lsblk' output as disklayout.conf header comments to make it easier to
    understand the values in the subsequent entries. Furthermore added 'xdd'
    to the PROGS array because sometimes a tool to display binary files is
    required in the recovery system. (issue #2298).

  o Error out during "rear mkrescue" in case of insufficient LVM tools:
    Overhauled layout/save/GNU/Linux/220_lvm_layout.sh where now the exit
    code of the "lvm ..." calls are checked and it errors out if one fails in
    particular to avoid that entries in disklayout.conf are missing or broken
    when too old LVM tools are used that do not support the needed options of
    those "lvm ..." calls. Also in layout/save/default/
    950_verify_disklayout_file.sh a simple test was added to verify that the
    'lvm...' entries in disklayout.conf look syntactically correct. Furthermore
    in 06-layout-configuration.adoc in the "Disk layout file syntax" section
    the exact same syntax for the "lvm..." entries is now listed as the headers
    of the "lvm..." entries in disklayout.conf are. (issues #2259 #2291)

  o Fixed missing delete_dummy_partitions_and_resize_real_ones calls: Use
    same code as for disks for multipath devices (these are just regular
    disks), including MBR erasing and partition creation and cleanup :
    create_multipath() cannot call create_disk() because create_disk()
    verifies that the device is a block device, which it isn't with multipath
    because it's a symlink to a device mapper instead. Make sure new code
    handling re-creation of partitions and cleanup is used because Software
    Raid can have partitions since these are virtual disks. (issue #2281)

  o Moved 'route' back from REQUIRED_PROGS to PROGS. ReaR uses 'ip route'
    everywhere so 'route' is not actually required. As 'route' is no longer
    always installed nowadays, having it in REQUIRED_PROGS lets ReaR falsely
    error out on such systems (issues #1961 #1652).

  o Update 990_verify_rootfs.sh: Use a FDRUPSTREAM-specific LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    to find FDR libraries (issue #2296).

  o Do not run 'ldd' on untrusted files to mitigate possible ldd security
    issues because some versions of ldd may directly execute the file (see
    "man ldd") which happens as user 'root' during "rear mkrescue". The new
    TRUSTED_FILE_OWNERS user config array contains user names that are
    trusted owners of files where RequiredSharedObjects calls ldd (cf.
    COPY_AS_IS) and where a ldd test is run inside the recovery system that
    tests all binaries for 'not found' libraries. Furthermore use '2>>/dev/
    $DISPENSABLE_OUTPUT_DEV' at more places to avoid that the "rear -D
    mkrescue" log file size would grow from about 5 MiB to about 17 MiB so
    that now that log file size even shrinked to about 2 MiB. (issue #2279)

  o Initial draft implementation of the new 'mountonly' workflow to use ReaR
    as rescue system, therein mount the filesystems of the target system so
    that one can manually repair it. This is described in doc/user-guide/
    04-scenarios.adoc (issue #2247).

  o Feature RAWDISK and OPALPBA improvements: RAWDISK: include additional
    Grub modules from /boot/grub (and /boot/grub2) which had formerly been
    missing. OPALPBA: improve Plymouth boot animation on Ubuntu, provide
    integration capabilities for other distros. RAWDISK: add support for
    distros which use 'grub2' naming. (issue #2275)

  o Improved check for missing libraries in 990_verify_rootfs.sh so that now
    also libraries are checked that are no executables plus skipped the ldd
    test for firmware files (issue #2279).

  o Update default.conf: More explanatory comment in default.conf how
    COPY_AS_IS versus LIBS, PROGS, and REQUIRED_PROGS are meant to be used
    (issue #2278).

  o Accommodate logs from multiple FDR/Upstream services. Users may run
    multiple FDR/Upstream services on a single machine. This code change
    allows ReaR to copy FDR/Upstream logs from the recovery environment to
    the restored system for all running services. Previously the code was
    expecting to find only one set of logs and reports in the FDR/Upstream
    installation directory. For several years now, logs and reports have been
    stored in a new location ($FDRUPSTREAM_DATA_PATH), so we check here
    instead (issue #2251).

  o Update format-workflow.sh: Set EXIT_FAIL_MESSAGE=0 before exiting in
    "rear format - -help" to avoid the "rear format failed, check ...rear...log
    for details" message that is pointless in this case.

  o Added alternative for 'poweroff.com' that is 'poweroff.c32' on RHEL8
    (issue #2238).

  o Removed unnecessary line that sets NSRSERVER in layout/save/NSR/default/
    650_check_iso_recoverable.sh which prevented setting NSRSERVER in
    local.conf (issue #2162).

  o Enhanced default AUTOEXCLUDE_PATH=( /media /run /mnt /tmp ) plus
    explanatory comment in default.conf how AUTOEXCLUDE_PATH works (issues #
    2239 #2261).

  o Use is_true() for AUTOEXCLUDE_MULTIPATH and cleanup of the
    get_partition_number function that now errors out with BugError in cases
    that are likely a bug in ReaR (issues #2245 #2260).

  o Do not abort in case of invalid user input but retry if possible. When
    input values can be (syntactically) validated there is now a retry loop
    until the user provided valid input (or intentionally aborts) except
    those cases where it was not possible to implement validation when it is
    unknown what is valid for third-party tools (issue #2253).

  o Removed '2>/dev/null' redirection where possible: Some general cleanup
    for ReaR 2.6. in all scripts by removing '2>/dev/null' where it makes
    sense and replacing '&>/dev/null' by '1>/dev/null' where it makes sense
    or also removing '&>/dev/null' where that seems to be better (issue #
    1395). By the way verify/TSM/default/
    390_request_point_in_time_restore_parameters.sh and verify/NBU/default/
    390_request_point_in_time_restore_parameters.sh have been somewhat
    overhauled but both scripts still abort 'rear recover' when the user did
    an invalid date or time input (issue #2253).

  o Fix including of multipath disks in backup: The AUTOEXCLUDE_DISKS logic
    traverses filesystems and tries to determine the associated underlying
    disks that should be kept. When having a filesystem fs:/A that is present
    on a multipath device MP and the root filesystem fs:/ that is present on
    a normal disk D, the code first established that fs:/A depends on fs:/
    resulting in marking D as used and then short-circuited processing of
    multipath devices. This resulted in MP not being considered as a used
    device and removed from the backup. The problem is fxed by removing the
    short-circuit logic in find_disk_and_multipath() so multipath devices get
    processed too unless AUTOEXCLUDE_MULTIPATH is true (issue #2236).

  o Improve handling of partition label type for multipath disks: When
    recording information about a multipath disk, ReaR did not store
    information about its partition label type in the 'multipath' entry in
    disklayout.conf. The recovery code tried to automatically detect the
    label type using a heuristic that depends on GPT partition names. The
    logic would incorrectly detect the device as having the MBR label type
    instead of GPT if one of the partition names was exactly "primary",
    "extended" or "logical". The problem is solved by explicitly storing the
    partition label type for multipath devices (same as is already done for
    normal disks) so that the syntax of the 'multipath' entries in
    disklayout.conf is changed and that new syntax is now documented in doc/
    user-guide/06-layout-configuration.adoc The recovery code is accordingly
    updated to utilize this information (issue #2234).

  o In doc/user-guide/16-Rubrik-CDM.adoc updated links to SUSE documentation:
    Replaced the outdated link https://www.suse.com/documentation/sle-ha-12/
    book_sleha/data/cha_ha_rear.html that gets redirected to a not really
    helpful standard fallback page by the currently valid URL for the most
    recent SLE-HA-15-SP1 https://documentation.suse.com/sle-ha/15-SP1/html/
    SLE-HA-all/cha-ha-rear.html because meanwhile the SUSE documentation was
    moved to its own server. The more general and more comprehensive
    documentation URL https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Disaster_Recovery is kept
    and listed topmost (issue #2255).

  o Added explanatory comments to default.conf about backup restore that may
    fail for things like BACKUP_PROG_COMPRESS_OPTIONS=("-zstd") due to
    missing zstd binaries in the ReaR recovery system probably also for -lzip
    -lzma -lzop (issue #2241).

  o New BACKUP=CDM method for Rubrik Cloud Data Management (CDM) see doc/
    user-guide/16-Rubrik-CDM.adoc (issues #2248 #2249).

  o In verify/NETFS/default/050_start_required_nfs_daemons.sh all kind of '2>
    /dev/null' (i.e. also '&>/dev/null') are removed (so that '&>/dev/null'
    is replaced by '1>/dev/null') because in general '2>/dev/null' is
    unhelpful because it needlessly suppresses error messages in the log that
    would be helpful to see when something fails (issues #2250 #1395).

  o Update 06-layout-configuration.adoc: Changed section title from
    "Including/Excluding components" to only "Excluding components". The
    latter avoids possible misunderstanding that there would be a config
    variable to explicitly include something but "including" here describes
    only to disable autoecludes (issue #2229).

  o Update default.conf: At AUTOEXCLUDE_DISKS removed the comment Explicitly
    excluding/including devices is generally a safer option because it is not
    acually helpful and even misleading because there is currently no config
    variable to explicitly include devices (issue #2229).

  o Do not keep the build dir when ReaR is run noninteractively by additional
    special values for the KEEP_BUILD_DIR config variable, see its
    desctiption in default.conf (issue #2218).

  o Fix LVM2 thin pool recreation logic / use of vgcfgrestore is broken:
    Removing forcibly (with '-force' passed twice) seems to work for now. But
    our use of vgcfgrestore is probably not appropriate at all. It works by
    chance. Typically, it works only for Linear volumes, and won't probably
    for Caches and Raid hierarchies or when there are existing Snapshots on
    the system. The only proper solution is perhaps stop relying on
    vgcfgrestore at all, but then we are not capable of restoring volume
    groups and logical volumes with all properties from original system
    (issue #2222).

  o Use mountpoint instead of mount | grep (issue #2225).

  o Updated default.conf: Replaced ARRAY=( "${ARRAY[@]}" additional elements
    ) with simpler and more fail safe ARRAY+=( additional elements ) (related
    to issues #2223 #2220).

  o Append to the CLONE_USERS and CLONE_GROUPS arrays by using += instead of
    expanding the previous value to an empty element which then causes
    problems later (issues #2223 #699).

  o Update 900_clone_users_and_groups.sh: Skip empty user and group values
    (issue #2220).

  o New use-case for BLOCKCLONE backup method for complex LUKS-encrypted
    filesystems by usinng the "multiple backups" approach with a second
    BLOCKCLONE phase with a dd image that contains the encrypted filesystem
    where unmounting the encrypted filesystem before creating its image and
    before restoring it has to be done via the new config variable
    BLOCKCLONE_TRY_UNMOUNT (issue #2200).

  o Fixed when ReaR does not detect an uncompressed kernel that is named
    'vmlinux' (instead of 'vmlinuz').

  o Added $BACKUP_OPTIONS to the line with mount_url in 800_copy_to_tftp.sh
    and 810_create_pxelinux_cfg.sh otherwise in case of OUTPUT=PXE mounting
    the NFS will fail.

  o UEFI: Search for Grub2 modules in /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi and not in /
    boot. On Fedora and RHEL systems, Grub2 UEFI modules live in /usr/lib/
    grub/x86_64-efi, not /boot, unless grub2-install is executed, but
    executing this tool is not needed with UEFI. On SUSE systems, Grub2 UEFI
    modules also live in /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi but there is also a copy in
    /boot, so it's not needed searching in /boot at all. Additionally, only
    UEFI modules should be looked for, so /boot cannot be searched but only /
    boot/grub2/x86_64-efi (similarly /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi, not just /usr/
    lib/grub*), otherwise we could get some false positives on dual boot
    systems (UEFI + Legacy), since modules for Legacy will also match, which
    is wrong (issues #2199 #2001).

  o RAWDISK and TCG Opal 2 Self-Encrypting Disks: Add Secure Boot support
    (issue #2166).

  o Avoid that disklayout.conf contains duplicate 'lvmvol' lines: Create the
    'lvmvol' lines commented out when multiple segments exist for a given LV.
    This is not an issue unless Migration Mode is used. In such case, using
    'lvcreate' commands already does best effort and loses LV information
    (issues #2194 #2187). Additionally do not overload the kval variable
    (that is intended for passing options to lvcreate) by adding extra keys
    to it, which are not supported by lvcreate. Introduce another variable
    infokval for this purpose and print those unsupported and purely
    informational keys only in comments (issue #2196).

  o Apply layout mappings also to other relevant files via layout/prepare/
    default/320_apply_mappings.sh In migration mode apply the disk layout
    mappings not only to disklayout.conf but also to other files that are
    also used to migrate the disk layout, namely VAR_DIR/layout/config/df.txt
    and /etc/rear/rescue.conf Additionally re-read the
    BTRFS_SUBVOLUME_SLES_SETUP variable from /etc/rear/rescue.conf because
    its value could have been migrated to a new value (issue #2181).

  o In the function apply_layout_mappings (therein in its "step 3") treat
    leftover temporary replacement words (like _REAR1_) as an error only if
    they are in a non-comment line (issue #2183).

  o When 420_autoresize_last_partitions.sh resizes the last partition on a
    GPT disk it leaves 33 LBA blocks at the end of the disk so that
    420_autoresize_last_partitions.sh produces a fully correct
    disklayout.conf file where no further automated adjustments by a
    subsequent script like 100_include_partition_code.sh are done (issue #
    2182).

  o Error out when DHCLIENT_BIN and DHCLIENT6_BIN are empty and USE_DHCLIENT
    is set (issue #2184).

  o In build/default/990_verify_rootfs.sh skip the ldd test for kernel
    modules because in general running ldd on kernel modules does not make
    sense and sometimes running ldd on kernel modules causes needless errors
    because sometimes that segfaults (issue #2177).

  o Bacula: Fixed 'bconsole' prompt not displaying at all when doing a
    recover (issue #2173).

  o Fixed that the EFI Boot Manager cannot be installed when the system has a
    NVMe SSD, because the device name is resolved as /dev/nvme0n1p rather
    than /dev/nvme0n1 so for NVMe devices the trailing 'p' in the Disk value
    as in /dev/nvme0n1p that is derived from /dev/nvme0n1p1 needs to be
    stripped to get /dev/nvme0n1 (issues #2160 #1564).

  o Changed double quotes (") to single quotes(') in documentation related to
    BORG_PASSPHRASE variable. Double quotes will not avoid expanding of
    variable when '$' sign is used inside pass phrase string, which can lead
    to unsuccessful opening of Borg archive (issue #2205).

  o More fail safe BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY handling: Use double quotes
    "$BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY" so that the BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY value can
    contain spaces. Escape special regexp characters in the
    BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY value when it is used as a regexp in grep or sed.
    Use single quotes BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY='my_passphrase' in the
    documentation examples so that the BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY value can
    contain special characters (except single quote). Recommend in
    default.conf to not use special characters in the BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY
    value to be to be on the safe side against things breaking in unexpected
    weird ways when certain code in ReaR is not yet safe against arbitrary
    special characters in values (issues #2157 #1372).

  o Avoid that the BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY value appears in a log file in
    particular when 'rear' is run in debugscript mode where 'set -x' is set
    by redirecting STDERR to /dev/null for those confidential commands that
    use the BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY value, cf. the comment of the UserInput
    function how to keep things confidential when 'rear' is run in
    debugscript mode (issues #2155 #2156).

  o Fix when recovery fails on LUKS-encrypted filesystem using simple
    password because only the first 2 parameters in /etc/crypttab are
    mandatory (issue #2151).

  o Generic enhancements for IBM Z (s390) to support 'dasd' disks and SUSE
    specific enhancements to install during "rear recover" the special GRUB2
    plus ZIPL bootloader on SLES12 and later via the new finalize/SUSE_LINUX/
    s390/660_install_grub2_and_zipl.sh script (issues #2137 #2150).

  o Cleanup of the OUTPUT=RAMDISK code. Overhauled 900_copy_ramdisk.sh as
    architecture independent new script output/RAMDISK/default/
    900_copy_ramdisk.sh that replaces output/RAMDISK/Linux-i386/
    900_copy_ramdisk.sh and overhauled conf/templates/
    RESULT_usage_RAMDISK.txt plus better description of OUTPUT=RAMDISK and
    RESULT_FILES in default.conf (issue #2148).

  o Enable creation of non consecutive partitions (issues #2081 #1793 #1771 #
    1681).

  o The new SUSE-specific script finalize/SUSE_LINUX/i386/675_install_shim.sh
    calls 'shim-install' inside chroot on the recreated target system and
    uses boot/grub2/grub.cfg as input to recreate two needed (identical) EFI
    files /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi/core.efi and /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse/
    grubx64.efi (issue #2116).

  o Fixed that output/default/950_copy_result_files.sh falsely errors out
    when an output method OUTPUT=FOO is used where there is no matching usr/
    share/rear/conf/templates/RESULT_usage_FOO.txt because when it is missing
    it is no sufficient reason to error out. Furthermore now
    950_copy_result_files.sh is skipped when RESULT_FILES is empty because
    that means there is no actual output and then it is not needed to only
    copy VERSION README and LOGFILE to the output location (issue #2147).

Version 2.5 (May 2019)

Abstract

New features, bigger enhancements, and possibly backward incompatible
changes:

  o 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).

  o 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.

  o 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.

  o 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.

  o The whole 'rear dump' output format need to be changed to improve it to
    clearly distinguish array elements.

  o 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".

  o 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.

Details (mostly in chronological order - newest topmost):

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o For backup NBU: Exclude the whole '/usr/openv/netbackup/logs' directory
    instead of only the files in that directory (issue #2132)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Replace RULE_FILES with a global UDEV_NET_MAC_RULE_FILES in default.conf
    (issues #2074 #2123)

  o Added comment to default.conf that tells when KEEP_BUILD_DIR is
    automatically set to true (issue #2121)

  o Added /usr/openv/netbackup/sec/at/lib/ to NBU_LD_LIBRARY_PATH in
    default.conf (issues #2105 #2122)

  o 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)

  o 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).

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o When mktemp needs to be called with a TEMPLATE call it with sufficent
    XXXXXXXXXX in the TEMPLATE, otherwise use the mktemp default (issue #
    2092)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Added 'net-tools' to Debian dependencies as required for 'route' command
    which belongs to the REQUIRED_PROGS (issue #2082)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Fixed 58-start-dhclient.sh script to make it work reliably with multiple
    network interfaces (issue #2038)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Basic support for EFISTUB booting plus documentation (issues #1942 #2030)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Error out when we cannot make a bootable EFI image of GRUB2 which is
    required when UEFI is used (issue 2013)

  o Allow non-interactive authentication with rsync by using
    BACKUP_RSYNC_OPTIONS to specify the "-password-file=/full/path/to/file"
    rsync option (issue #2011)

  o Add possibility for user to specify whether or not show Borg stats at the
    end of backup session (issue #2008)

  o Adaption for Fedora 29: grub2-efi-x64-modules does not contain linuxefi
    module (issue #2001)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Enhanced and more robust exclude of vfat filesystem (ESP) from SELinux
    relabeling during recover process (issue #1977)

  o 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)

  o Add /etc/ca-certificates directory to recovery system (issue #1971)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Check for carriage return in local/site/rescue.conf files (issue #1965)

  o Specific required programs are added to REQUIRED_PROGS depending on what
    component keywords are used in disklayout.conf (issue #1963)

  o Cleanup and enhancement of REQUIRED_PROGS and PROGS checks (issue #1962)

  o Moved PROGS from GNU/Linux.conf to default.conf REQUIRED_PROGS (issue #
    892)

  o Record permanent mac address when device is enslaved in a bond, or else /
    etc/mac-addresses will record broken information (issue #1954)

  o 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.

  o 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)

  o Fixed that the FindStorageDrivers function failed on kernels with no
    modules. When MODULES=( 'no_modules' ) is set FindStorageDrivers() is now
    skipped (issue #1941)

  o Increased the default USB_UEFI_PART_SIZE from 200 to 400 MiB (issue #
    1205)

  o 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.

  o In 500_clone_keyboard_mappings.sh avoid running find in the whole tree of
    filesystems which takes ages (issue #1906)

  o Let 100_include_partition_code.sh error out when the parted command is
    not there (issue #1933)

  o Suppress bash stderr messages like 'unary operator expected' or 'integer
    expression expected' where a particular 'test' intentionally also fails
    this way (issue #1931)

  o Show errors to the user via LogPrintError instead of only LogPrint
    because LogPrint outputs only in case of verbose mode (issue #1914)

  o 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)

  o Avoid 'nullglob' pitfalls in 250_populate_efibootimg.sh and generally
    overhalued that script (issue #1921)

  o Check that CONFIG_DIR is a directory (issue #1815)

  o Avoid bash error messages like: "eq: unary operator expected" when using
    older versions of xfsprogs (issue #1915)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Fixed and enhanced NETFS+tar backup pipe exit code handling (issue #1913)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Print multipath device name during "rear recover" when "firendly_name"
    option is off (issue #1889)

  o Now the Error function shows some last messages of the last sourced
    script to the user (issues #1877 #1875)

  o Duplicity: Misc improvements (issues #1876 #1879 #1882)

  o Added code to recognize persistent LAN interface and manipulate
    KERNEL_CMDLINE (issue #1874)

  o Initial tentative support for OBDR on ppc64le (issue #1868)

  o Wait for systemd-udevd to avoid broken pipe error in
    40-start-udev-or-load-modules.sh (issue #1832)

  o Aviod duplicate UUID in boot menuentry when snapper is used (issue #1871)

  o Added choice to confirm identical layout mapping only once plus disabling
    MIGRATION_MODE (issue #1857)

  o Verify md5sums of files in recovery system (issues #1859 #1895)

  o Fedora28: syslinux needs libcom32.c32 to boot from HD and missing
    ldlinux.c32 and libutil.c32 prevents PXE booting (issues #1861, #1866)

  o Add support for Slackware UEFI/USB (issues #1853, #1863)

  o RAWDISK output portability improvements (issue #1846)

  o Fixed, simplified, and enhanced GRUB2 installation on x86 and ppc64le
    architecture (issues #1828, #1845, #1847, #1437)

Version 2.4 (June 2018)

Abstract

New features, bigger enhancements, and possibly backward incompatible
changes:

  o 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

  o 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.

  o 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.

  o Simplified and enhanced TSM restore plus first draft of TSM backup.

  o EMC Avamar support has been added.

  o Duplicity backup has been seriously enhanced.

  o Support for TCG Opal 2-compliant self-encrypting disks and RAWDISK
    output.

  o YUM+backup adds the ability to backup and restore files to the YUM
    method.

Details (mostly in chronological order):

  o Copy backup restore log into recreated system (issue #1803)

  o Sesam integration: add sesam bin directory to LD_LIBRARY_PATH (issue #
    1817)

  o ReaR recovery fails when the OS contains a Thin Pool/Volume (issues #
    1380, #1806)

  o Make SLES12-GA/SP0 btrfs recovery work again (issues #1796, #1813)

  o Verify if dm-X is a partition before adding to sysfs_paths (issue #1805)

  o Do not start multipathd when not needed (issue #1804)

  o Better way to get multiapth partion name (issue #1802)

  o Exclude multipath device that does not have mounted fs (issue #1801)

  o Do not print each files restores by TSM in main output (issue #1797)

  o man page BACKUP SOFTWARE INTEGRATION update (issues #1788, #1791)

  o In the DRLM specific function drlm_import_runtime_config() solve problem
    with some variables loading config from DRLM (issue #1794)

  o Better describe NON_FATAL_BINARIES_WITH_MISSING_LIBRARY in default.conf
    (issues #1792, #1693)

  o Introduced KEYMAPS_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY and KEYMAP variables, see the
    default.conf file (issues #1781, #1787)

  o Fix multipath partition replacement and multipath partition naming (issue
    #1765)

  o Skip LUKS encrypted disks when guessing bootloader (issue #1779)

  o First draft of TSM backup (issue #1348)

  o HP RAID code was updated as the new executable is now called as "ssacli"
    (issue #1760)

  o Exclude docker file systems from layout (issue #1749)

  o Added migation mode confirmation at beginning of finalize stage (issue #
    1758)

  o Show descendant processes PIDs with their commands in the log via pstree
    or ps as fallback (issues #1755, #1756)

  o Check for 'Hah!IdontNeedEFI' GUID number for a GPT BIOS boot partition
    (issues #1752, #1754, #1780)

  o Fixed invalid reported return code (always 0) upon NBU restoration
    failure (issue #1751)

  o Run exit tasks code with default bash flags and options (issues #700, #
    1747, #1748)

  o Major rework and changed default behaviour regarding
    AUTORESIZE_PARTITIONS (issues #102, #1731, #1733, #1746)

  o YUM+backup adds the ability to backup and restore files to the YUM method
    (issues #1464, #1740)

  o Add dbus user and group by default (issues #1710, #1743)

  o Add gsk libs to TSM_LD_LIBRARY_PATH (issue #1744)

  o Use 'grub2-install -no-nvram' on PowerNV system (issue #1742)

  o We can use chronyd as time syncing mechanism now as well (issue #1739)

  o Trace and fix broken symbolic links in rootfs (issues #1638, #1734)

  o Borg Backup can now use USB disk as well as backup storage area (issue #
    1730)

  o Initial support for ARM (issue #1662)

  o Improve the network parameters on the Linux Kernel command line (issue #
    1725)

  o Clean termination of descendant processes (issues #1712, #1720)

  o Simpler and more fail-safe SLE btrfs-example.conf files (issues #1714, #
    1716)

  o Use a fallback to get interface state using the 'carrier' status (issues
    #1701, #1719)

  o Fix duplicity backup (issue #1695)

  o Include Bareos plugin directory to make bareos-fd start reliably (issues
    #1692, #1708)

  o Again support GPT partition names with blanks (issues #212, #1563, #1706)

  o Improvements around Borg Backup (issues #1698, #1700)

  o Automatically add 'missing' devices to MD arrays with not enough physical
    devices upon restore (issue #1697)

  o Network setup was completely reworked to support bonding, bridges, vlans
    and teaming (issue #1574)

  o Fixed restore backup when BACKUP_INTEGRITY_CHECK=1 (issue #1685)

  o Support TCG Opal 2-compliant self-encrypting disks and RAWDISK output
    (issue #1659)

  o Add EMC Avamar backup (issues #1621, #1677, #1687)

  o Avoid falsely detected changed layout for 'rear checklayout' (issues #
    1657, #1658, #1673)

  o Simplified TSM dsmc restore and improved TSM connection test (issues #
    1534, #1643, #1645)

  o Duplicity with duply waits forever (issues #1664, #1672)

  o 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... :-)

Version 2.3 (December 2017)

Abstract

New features and bigger enhancements:

  o 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.

  o 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).

  o 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.

  o 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:

  o 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.

  o 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).

  o 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).

  o 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).

Details (mostly in chronological order):

  o Use /etc/os-release and /etc/system-release before falling back to
    lsb_release check in function SetOSVendorAndVersion (issues #1611, #731)

  o Make BACKUP_URL=iso for mkrescue and mkbackuponly no longer fatal (issue
    #1613)

  o Add ntpdate support (issue #1608)

  o Fix for XFS file system recreation code. In xfsprogs >= 4.7 log section
    sunit=0 is considered invalid (issue #1603)

  o Changed the macro fedora_release into fedora in the rear.spec file (issue
    #1192 and bz1419512)

  o Borg backup as back end now displays progress, when ReaR is launched in
    verbose mode (issue #1594)

  o Better MIGRATION_MODE autodetection (pull request #1593 related to issue
    #1271)

  o 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).

  o Add a NSR_CLIENT_MODE to the backup method NSR (issue #1584)

  o Let /bin/ldd detect *.so with relative paths (issue #1560)

  o Add support for Bridge Interfaces(issue #1570). Usually, virtual
    interfaces are skipped, but for Bridges to work, we consider Bridges as
    physical interfaces, because the Bridge interface holds the IP address,
    not the physical interface attached to the Bridge. This patch enables
    those configurations:
      - Bridge over simple Ethernet
      - Bridge over Bond
      - Bridge over Vlan interface
  o Use UserInput in some more usual places to improve that 'rear recover'
    can run unattended in migration mode (issues #1573, #1399)

  o Error out for OUTPUT_URL=null together with OUTPUT=USB (issue #1571)

  o Added/updated paths for FDR/Upstream 4.0 because FDR/Upstream 4.0
    includes changes to some file paths (issue #1559)

  o Fix copying kernel modules when module aliases are present (issue #1567)

  o Netbackup agents not automatically started on RHEL 7 (issue #1523)

  o Forbid mkrescue and mkbackuponly for iso backup scheme (issues #1547, #
    1548)

  o Only support OpenSSH 3.1 and later for SSH setup (issue #1530)

  o Implemented USB_DEVICE_FILESYSTEM_LABEL (issue #1535)

  o Split network-functions.sh into DHCP setup and general ReaR functions
    (issue #1517)

  o Avoid leaking unprotected SSH private key files onto rescue medium
    (issues #1512, #1513)

  o Improve cryptographic security and user-friendliness for LUKS volumes
    (issue #1493)

  o Improve ReaR network migration (issues #1605, #1510, #1399)

  o Improved encrypted password detection in 500_ssh.sh (issue #1503)

  o Several code improvements in the way libraries are detected and copied
    (issues #1521, #1502, #1494)

  o Allow btrfsmountedsubvol to be excluded via EXCLUDE_RECREATE (issue #
    1497)

  o Avoid recreation of non-existing btrfs subvolumes (issue #1496)

  o Add automatically some important kernel parameters to KERNEL_CMDLINE
    (issue #1495)

  o Cleanup and simplified default input for the UserInput function (issue #
    1498)

  o 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)

  o Enhanced how the ssh user is copied into the recovery system and improved
    detection of the ssh user (issue #1489)

  o 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)

  o Fix UEFI tools integration (issues #1477, #1478)

  o 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)

  o BACKUP_PROG_OPTIONS used to be a string variable, turn it into an array
    (issue #1475)

  o Now CLONE_ALL_USERS_GROUPS always extends the CLONE_USERS and
    CLONE_GROUPS arrays (issues #1471, #1464)

  o PXE code improvements (issue #1466)

  o Several improvements in the multipath code to allow full migration
    (issues #1449, #1450)

  o Several improvements on the TSM code (issues #1539, #1461, #1452)

  o Activate btrfs filesystem creation with uuid. Recent btrfs version
    finally added this option (issue #1463)

  o 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)

  o Fix for cryptsetup hang on cryptsetup luksOpen ... when dmsetup is not
    present in recovery system (issue #1458)

  o Enhance MOUNTPOINTS_TO_RESTORE into DIRECTORIES_TO_CREATE (issue #1455)

  o Several improvements for ppc64le/ppc64 arch. Systemd automatic serial
    console detection, lilo and yaboot improvements (issue #1446, #1442)

  o Introduction of UserInput in 300_map_disks.sh (issues 1399 and 1431)

  o 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)

  o SLES12 with btrfs but without snapshots failed to recreate/mount btrfs FS
    /subvolumes during recovery (issue #1036)

  o Adapt chrp-boot option when xorrisofs is used. Xorrisofs use
    -chrp-boot-part option to generate PPC boot while mkisofs use -chrp
    (issue #1430)

Version 2.2 (July 2017)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Add missing privilege separation dir to start sshd on Debian 9 (issue #
    1381)

  o Redirect rsync verbose output to backup log (issue #1387)

  o Load storage controllers in rescue system in same order as on host system
    (issue #1384):
      - Copy over modules from initrd on SUSE LINUX
      - Prevent sorting of MODULES_LOAD array to keep the order intended
  o Add /yaboot to ISO_FILE when running SUSE ppc64 (issue #1414)

  o Add SSL cert directories so we can interact with Google Cloud Storage
    (issue #1402)

  o Modified the "unattended" into "automatic" with ISO_DEFAULT required for
    automated recovery tests (issue #1397)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Replaced some perl regexp with grep native extended regexp (issue #1376)

  o 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)

  o 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)

  o Create multipath.conf only during migration (from non-multipath to
    multipath), and always copy /etc/multipath/bindings to the TARGET_FS_ROOT
    (issues #1382, #1393)

Version 2.1 (June 2017)

  o Support for Grub2 installation with software RAID1 on Linux on POWER
    (ppc64/ppc64le) (issue #1369)

  o 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)

  o ISO_RECOVER_MODE=unattended mode (issue #1351) - required for automated
    ReaR testing with OUTPUT=ISO

  o MODULES variable supports now special values like 'all_modules',
    'loaded_modules', 'no_modules' (issues #1202, #1355)

  o Include systemd/network to preserve "Predictable Network Interface Names"
    (issue #1349)

  o Various improvements regarding multipath (issues #1190, #1309, #1310, #
    1311, #1314, #1315, #1324, #1325, #1328, #1329, #1344, #1346)

  o Show OUTPUT variables in rear dump (issue #1337)

  o Added support for "grub PXE style" via PXE_CONFIG_GRUB_STYLE and
    PXE_TFTP_IP on non x86 platform (issue #1339)

  o Try 'wipefs -force' and use 'dd' as fallback to better clean up disk
    partitions (issue #1327)

  o Reorganized "finalize" scripts ordering and cleanup of the PPC bootloader
    installation (issue #1323)

  o Avoid long default wait in 'dig' when DNS servers are not set (issue #
    1319)

  o Fail-safe calculations in partitioning code (issues #1269, #1307)

  o Improved support on ppc/ppc64/ppc64le architectures (issues #1178, #1311,
    #1313, #1322)

  o Define hostname in both /etc/HOSTNAME and /etc/hostname in rescue image
    (for Arch) (issue #1316)

  o Rename network interface when MAC not present in udev (issue #1312)

  o Added support for 'nano' editor (in addition to 'vi') (issues #1298, #
    1306)

  o mmcblk disk types are now supported (issues #1301, #1302)

  o NETFS_RESTORE_CAPABILITIES variable was introduced to restore file
    capabilities in a proper way (issue #1283)

  o Added required libs and files for 'curl' with HTTPs by default (issues #
    1267, #1279)

  o More precise XFS file system creation during rear recover (issues #1208,
    #1213, #1276)

  o DRLM management and security improvements (issue #1252)

  o Improved BOOTLOADER support (issue #1242)

  o DRLM support for multiple backups via multiple config files (issue #1229)

  o FIRMWARE_FILES support to exclude firmware files in rescue image to
    reduce the size of image (issue #1216)

  o Enable SELinux in the rescue image for tar internal backup method if
    BACKUP_SELINUX_DISABLE=0 (issue #1215)

  o BOOT_OVER_SAN is now fully supported (issues #1190, #1309, #1314, #1315,
    #1325, #1329, #1344)

  o NVME disks are now fully supported (issue #1191)

  o Some initial basic support for new backup type ZYPPER was added (issues #
    1085, #1209)

  o Finding UEFI boot loaders on non standard places (issues #1204, #1225, #
    1293)

  o The USB UEFI partition size USB_UEFI_PART_SIZE for kernel image has been
    increased from 100 to 200 MB (issue #1205)

  o REAR_INITRD_COMPRESSION variable was introduced to specify initrd
    compression (e.g. 'lzma' for PPC64) (issues #1142, #1218, #1290)

  o New backup type BLOCKCLONE was added to backup non-Linux partitions (e.g.
    Windows NTFS partitions) (issues #1078, #1162, #1172, #1180)

  o Bareos 16.2 is now supported (issue #1169)

  o New USB_PARTITION_ALIGN_BLOCK_SIZE and USB_DEVICE_FILESYSTEM_PARAMS
    variables were added (issue #1217)

  o Improved the USB backup selection menu during the recovery via USB (issue
    #1166)

  o USB_SUFFIX variable was introduced to align backup on USB with backup on
    NFS (issues #1164, #1160, #1145)

  o Forbid incremental backup to work on BACKUP_URL=usb:// (issue #1146)

  o The USB_DEVICE_PARTED_LABEL=gpt setting is now honered while formatting
    the USB disk (issue #1153)

Version 2.00 (January 2017)

(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.

  o Bareos support: add missing directory /var/run/bareos in recovery system
    (issue #1148)

  o Forbid BACKUP_URL=usb for BACKUP_TYPE=incremental/differential (issues #
    1141 and #1145)

  o Improved and added new example configurations (issue #1068, #1058)

  o Modified/Improved the exit code messages of ReaR (issues #1089, #1133)

  o Fix documentation regarding OUTPUT_URL=null (issues #734, #1130)

  o Better and fail safe progress messages while tar backup restore (issue #
    1116)

  o Implement simulation mode with simulation with the workflows validate and
    shell (issue #1098)

  o Update 11-multiple-backups.adoc : Multiple backups are in general not
    supported for BACKUP_TYPE=incremental or BACKUP_TYPE=differential (issues
    #1074 and #1123)

  o Using RUNTIME_LOGFILE in all scripts as needed (issue #1119)

  o New Backup method was added - BORG (issues #1030, #1037, #1046, #1048, #
    1118)

  o Multiple backups are now possible (issues #1088, #1102, #1096) - see the
    documentation page (New)

  o Support partitioning and formatting huge USB devices (issue #1105)

  o Skip remount async when systemd is used (issue #1097)

  o Fixed and enhanced code for multiple ISOs (issue #1081)

  o BACKUP_TYPE=incremental and BACKUP_TYPE=differential were updated (issues
    #974, #1069)

  o Added support for setting a UUID on XFS with enabled CRC (RHEL 7) (issue
    #1065)

  o Fix for ISO not bootable for SLES11 ppc64 with root LVM (issue #1061)

  o PXE booting enhancement with new style of uploading the boot files (issue
    #193)

  o Renumbering the ReaR scripts from 2-digits to 3-digits (issue #1051)

  o Improved boot loader detection (issue #1038)

Version 1.19.0 (October 2016)

  o Save bootloader info from POWER architecture and rebuild initrd after
    migration (issues #1029, #1031)

  o Improved documentation and man page in general (issues #918, #930, #1004,
    #1007, #1008)

  o New SLE12-SP2-btrfs-example.conf file because since SLES12-SP2 btrfs
    quota setup for snapper via "snapper setup-quota" is needed (issue #999)

  o Simplified reboot halt poweroff and shutdown in the rescue/recovery
    system in case of systemd (issue #953)

  o If TSM parameters contain a dot, the dot is replaced by an underscore in
    the TSM_SYS variable names (issues #985 and #986)

  o Check if /dev/disk/by-label/RELAXRECOVER exist (issues #979 and #326)

  o Added PRE_BACKUP_SCRIPT and POST_BACKUP_SCRIPT to be able to do custom
    tasks in the mkbackup/mkbackuponly workflows (issue #977)

  o Make TMPDIR work in compliance with Unix standards (issue #969)

  o USE_STATIC_NETWORKING now really overrides USE_DHCLIENT (issue #964)

  o Make it safe against wrong btrfs subvolumes on SLES12 (issues #963, #966)

  o Encrypted incremental backup cannot read the tar label (issue #952)

  o Introduction of the NETWORKING_PREPARATION_COMMANDS variable to prepare
    network setup in the rescue/recovery system (issue #960)

  o After migration fs_uuid for root partition was not changed in ELILO
    config file /etc/elilo.conf (issue #956)

  o Clarified rear man page and default.conf file around BACKUP_URL=rsync:
    (issues #930 and #918)

  o Make "rear recover" work with default btrfs on SLES12-SP2 (issue #944)

  o 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)

  o Bail out if not enough disk space for GRUB and GRUB2 rescue image (issue
    #913)

  o Use BACKUP_PROG_COMPRESS_OPTIONS as an array so that one can use it to
    provide more complex values (issue #904)

  o Add /usr/lib/syslinux/bios to the search path for mbr.bin (issue #908)

  o Always load modules in /etc/modules (issue #905)

  o Ask user for EFI partition size on USB disk (issue #849)

  o Insure /etc/rear/mappings directory exists before doing a recovery (issue
    #861)

  o First steps for rescue/recovery system update support via
    RECOVERY_UPDATE_URL (issue #841)

  o NFS mount points are not recreated after a recover (issue #818)

  o Correcting ReaR return code handling in auto recover mode (issue #893)

  o Added NFSv4 support for security 'sys' only so far (issue #754)

  o Changed the usage of 'rpcinfo -p' a bit to have the same outcome of
    different Linux flavours (issue #889)

  o RSYNC: /boot/efi needs -relative rsync option (issue #871)

  o New variables added for Bareos: BAREOS_RESTORE_JOB and BAREOS_FILESET

  o Multipath partition not found in rhel7.2 (issue #875)

  o Adding support for ppc64le PowerNV (non-virtualized aka Bare-Metal)
    (issue #863)

  o First steps to support new ftpfs BACKUP_URL scheme (issue #845)

  o Clean up 'url_host()' (issue #856)

  o Fix that libaio (needed for multipath) could be missing in rescue/
    recovery system because libaio can be located in different directories
    (issue #852)

  o Improved the Relax-and-Recover menu for GRUB2 (issues #844, #849, #850)

  o Check for valid BACKUP_URL schemes (issue #842)

  o USB UEFI boot support (issue #831)

  o Mitigate the problem that btrfs subvolums are not restored by default via
    TSM (issue #833)

  o Determine EFI virtual disk size automatically (issue #816)

  o ebiso image size is too small if BACKUP=TSM (issue #811)

  o Improving the logics around ebiso usage in UEFI mode (issue #801)

  o Fix for wrong UUID in initrd for bootfs (issues #649 and #851)

Version 1.18.0 (March 2016)

  o Support was added for NVME SSD type of disk devices (issue #787)

  o For LUKS added the password libraries (issue #679)

  o 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)

  o 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=()

  o Improved 40-start-udev-or-load-modules.sh script for better udevd
    handling (issue #766)

  o Run ldconfig -X before dhclient gets started at boot time (issue #772)

  o Remove the "-c3" option fron rsyslogd start-up (issue #773)

  o Add example configuration for NetBackup Master/Media server

  o Added backup capabilities; getcap and setcap are used to backup and
    restore (issue #771)

  o Correct bash syntax so ReaR is compatible with bash v3 and v4 (issue #
    765, #767)

  o Added support for new backup method Novastor NovaBACKUP DC (BACKUP=NBKDC)
    (issue #669)

  o Code was improved to have network teaming support (issue #655)

  o Example configuration to put backup and rescue image on same ISO image,
    eg. DVD (issue #430)

  o Improved the ReaR documentation

  o remove the noatime mount option for cifs mount (issue #752)

  o Replace option 'grep -P' to 'grep -E' due to SELinux errors (issues #565,
    #737)

  o Hidding the encryption key while doing the restore in the rear.log (issue
    #749)

  o is_true function was to uniform the different ways of enable/disble
    variable settings (issue #625)

  o Added and use sysctl.conf; rescue mode should honor these settings (issue
    #748)

  o The BACKUP_PROG_COMPRESS variable was not used during incremental backup
    (issue #743)

  o prevent any other workflow in ReaR rescue mode then recover (issue #719)

  o Exclude Oracle ASM device directory from Rescue System (issue #721)

  o SaveBashFlagsAndOptions and RestoreBashFlagsAndOptions in usr/share/rear/
    lib/framework-functions.sh were added (issue #700)

  o /mnt/local became a global variable TARGET_FS_ROOT (issue #708)

  o Copy rear.log from recovery into /var/log/rear/recovery/ directory after
    a 'rear recover' (issue #706)

  o wipefs will be used when available (issue #649)

  o SAN related improvements with btrfs (issue #695)

  o Support for shim.efi (UEFI booting) added (issue #702)

  o Added support for elilo (used by SLES 11/12) (issue #583, #691, #692, #
    693)

  o Added the -debugscripts command line option (help-workflow) (issue #688)

  o Removed dosfslabel as required program for vfat UEFI boot partition
    (issue #694)

  o Bareos team added BAREOS_FILESET and ISO_DEFAULT to default.conf (for
    automated DR tests executed by Bareos team; issues #686, #719)

  o Fix getty/agetty with upstart (issue #685)

  o New SLE11-SLE12-SAP-HANA-UEFI-example.conf (issue #683)

  o usr/share/rear/conf/examples/SLE12-SP1-btrfs-example.conf added as an
    example configuration file

  o Added support for the SUSE specific gpt_sync_mbr partitioning scheme
    (issue #544)

  o Improved btrfs snapshot support with SLES 12 (issue #556)

  o Unload scsi_debug driver in recovery mode for RHEL 7.1 (issue #626)

  o Saved the current mount points and permissions; in order to improve and
    avoid missing mount points after recovery (issue #619)

  o NSR servername not defined causing ReaR to hang (issue #637)

  o Removed mingetty as a required package (issue #661)

  o Adding -scrollprompt=no to dsmc query in script verify/TSM/default/
    40_verify_tsm.sh (issue #667)

  o Fixed a bug around USB_DEVICE and OUTPUT_URL mis-match (issue #579)

  o grub support for ppc64 (issue #673)

  o grub2 supported was added for ppc64 (issue #672)

  o ppc64le support was added into the rear.spec (issue #665)

  o Network code partially rewritten to improve teaming (issue #662)

  o Changed default value of USE_CFG2HTML from 1 to empty (means do not run
    cfg2html by default) (issue #643)

  o 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)

  o Check via NSR if the ISO image is not obsolete (issue #653)

  o Added ebiso support within ReaR (required for UEFI booting with SLES 11 &
    12 (issue #657)

  o FDR/Upstream (BACKUP=FDRUPSTREAM) (New) (issue #659)

Version 1.17.2 (August 2015)

  o Several fixed required to the Debian packaging rules needed so it builds
    correctly on OBS

  o Fixed the NTP startup script (issue #641)

  o Fixed the vfat label issue (issue #647)

  o Improved the DUPLICITY method with finding all required libraries and
    python scripts

  o Added the /run directory to the list of recreating missing directories
    (issue #619)

  o Fix issue with USB disk and rsync as internal backup program (issue #645)

  o Fix rsync restore: -anchored invalid rsync option (issue #642)

  o A new variable was introduced NSR_POOLNAME (issue #640)

  o Replaced almost all temporary files from /tmp/ to $TMP_DIR/ (issue #607)
    Related to security recommendations for Fedora and RHEL:
      - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1239009 (f22)
      - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1238843 (rhel 7.2)
  o Move nfs-client from depends to recommends in Debian control file (issue
    #633)

  o 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)

  o Support the Oracle Linux 6 ksplice module (issue #605)

  o In script 27_hpraid_layout.sh added the missing
    HPSSACLI_BIN_INSTALLATION_DIR variable to the COPY_AS_IS array (issue #
    630)

  o Modified the packaging Makefile and rules for debian to fix the failing
    OBS Debian builds (issue #604)

  o Syslinux version > 5.00 is now supported (ISO and USB output) - works on
    Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.04 (issue #624)

  o 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)

  o Support was added for SLES11 on PPC64 hardware (issues #616 and #628)

  o Support was added for new hardware - PPC64LE - RHEL and Ubuntu (issue #
    627)

  o FIX the hashed password (SSH_ROOT_PASSWORD variable) and added a missing
    library libfreeblpriv3 (issue #560)

  o 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)

  o Variable MANUAL_INCLUDE=YES has been introduced to work with array
    BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE (issue #597)

  o 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)

  o ReaR website shows the user guide which is part of the ReaR software
    (linked to GitHub)

  o new document 10-integrating-external-backup.adoc which explains the steps
    to take for a new backup integration into ReaR

  o All AsciiDoc documentation changed extention from .txt to .adoc

Version 1.17.1 (June 2015)

  o Removed the plain password in the logs (and output) coming from
    BACKUP_PROG_CRYPT_KEY to avoid crib (issue #568)

  o 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)

  o Elilo support has been added for SLES (not fully tested yet) - issue #583

  o Grub2 rescue menu has been added (enable this feature with GRUB_RESCUE=y)
    - issue #589

  o 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.

  o 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>

  o Simplified the code for ext* fs and added StopIfError calls to prevent
    divide by zero during recovery (issue #598)

  o Syslinux version >6 requires some special handling due to splitting up
    the package (Ubuntu 15.04) (issue #584)

  o Debian 8 support added with ISO booting with latest syslinux release as
    well (issues #596, #599 and #600)

  o Changed the behavior of SSH_ROOT_PASSWORD - now saved as MD5 hash
    password, but backwards compatibility is still respected (issue #560)

  o For EMC NetWorker server/client we added some exclude items to
    COPY_AS_IS_EXCLUDE_NSR (issue #571)

  o Removed the Warning message from main usr/sbin/rear script as it was
    misleading (issues #563 and #564)

  o output/ISO/Linux-i386/80_create_isofs.sh: make sure ISO_FILES[@] are
    copied to isofs directory (issue #569)

System and Software Requirements

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.

Choosing the best compression algorithm

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

Support

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).

Supported and Unsupported Operating Systems

We try to keep our wiki page Test Matrix rear 2.6 up-to-date with feedback we
receive from the community.

ReaR-2.6 is supported on the following Linux based operating systems:

  o Fedora 29, 30, 31, and 32
  o RHEL 6, 7, and 8
  o CentOS 6, 7, and 8
  o Scientific Linux 6 and 7
  o SLES 12 and 15
  o openSUSE Leap 15.x
  o Debian 8, and 9
  o Ubuntu 16, 17, and 18

ReaR-2.6 dropped official support for the following Linux based operating
systems:

  o Fedora < 29
  o RHEL < 6
  o CentOS < 6
  o Scientific Linux < 6
  o SLES < 12
  o openSUSE Leap 42.x and before (i.e. openSUSE <= 13)
  o openSUSE Tumbleweed
  o Debian < 8
  o Ubuntu < 16

Usually ReaR-2.6 should also work on newer versions of the above listed
supported Linux based operating systems but sometimes arbitrary failures can
happen when software that is used by ReaR (like partitioning tools,
filesystem tools, bootloader tools, ISO image creating tools, networking
tools, and so on) changes in not fully backward compatible ways or when there
are innovations of the basic system (like kernel, storage, bootloader, init,
networking, and so on) that are not yet supported by ReaR.

In theory ReaR-2.6 should work on openSUSE Tumbleweed but in practice
arbitrary failures could happen at any time because the Tumbleweed
distribution is a pure rolling release version of openSUSE containing the
latest stable versions of all software (cf. https://en.opensuse.org/
Portal:Tumbleweed) so arbitrary changes of any software are possible at any
time that could arbitrarily break how ReaR works.

ReaR-2.6 may still work for SLES 11 and openSUSE Leap 42.x or even earlier
openSUSE versions but it is no longer sufficiently well tested there so
arbitrary regressions could appear.

ReaR 2.6, 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:

  o RHEL 5 (and probably also CentOS 5): See issue #1766
  o SLES 9 and 10: See issue #1842

If you require support for unsupported Linux operating systems you must
acquire a ReaR support contract.

Requests to port ReaR to another operating system (not Linux) can only be
achieved with serious sponsoring.

Supported and Unsupported Architectures

ReaR-2.6 is supported on:

  o Intel x86 type of processors
  o AMD x86 type of processors
  o PPC64 processors
  o PPC64LE processors

ReaR-2.6 may or may not work on:

  o Intel Itanium processors
  o ARM type of processors
  o IBM Z "s390x" type of processors

ReaR-2.6 does not support:

  o old PPC (32bit) processors

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.

Supported ReaR versions

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.

Known Problems and Workarounds

Issue Description: 'rear' package on Ubuntu 14.04 depends on isolinux package
(which does not exist)

  o Workaround:

Read the comments in issue #1403

Issue Description: tar -test-label is not supported on Centos 5 who have tar
version 1.15

  o Workaround:

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.

  o Workaround:

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.

  o Workaround:

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

  o Workaround:

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

  o Workaround:

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.

  o 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

  o 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.

  o 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

  o Workaround:

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.

  o Workaround:

Reboot your server before using ReaR again, which is a good practice anyway
after upgrading the GNU/Linux kernel.

