Need Help?
First take a moment to read our FAQ below, as it has the answers to all of the common questions you may have about Redo Backup. If you don't find the answer here, please post your questions or suggestions to the Redo Backup forum on SourceForge.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: It hangs during boot!
A: Some computers boot extremely slow. Give it a minute, especially if the computer continues to read from the CD-ROM or USB drive.
If you only experience this when booting from USB, it is possible that in the BIOS, your USB drive may need to be identified as USB-HDD, USB-ZIP, or some other setting that may improve performance.
Q: My backup froze at XX% and no error was given! What happened?
A: Close out the backup that failed or is frozen, and then go to Tools > Terminal. At the terminal type cat /partclone.log and hit ENTER to see what went wrong. Then file a bug report with the exact error message you received. Remember that Redo Backup is a frontend to the Partclone project, so if you can run partclone successfully, Redo Backup should work for you.
Q: How can I see the commands, output, or errors (debug mode)?
A: Boot into Redo. Right-click the Redo icon at the bottom of the screen and CLOSE it. Then click the menu button and select Tools > Terminal. In the terminal window, type redobackup and hit ENTER. This will launch Redo again, but the terminal window will stay open, allowing you to see all the background commands, output, and any errors generated in the process. If you are having trouble restoring, pay special attention to the terminal window when the restore begins; this is when the partition table is being written and the filesystems are being created.
Q: Can I restore a backup to a smaller drive?
A: No. Doing so likely would require modifying the bootloader, and simplicity is then defeated. The best way to ensure that the restore is successful is to restore an identical image, which requires a drive of equal or greater size. Once the backup is restored, the partition can easily be resized using the proper tools (e.g. GParted).
Q: How do navigate the windows?
A: Each open window has an icon at the bottom of the screen. You can click an icon to switch to that window, or you can right-click the icon to close it.
Q: Why won't my hardware work?
A: It may not be supported by Ubuntu. If that's the case, then Redo can't either. If it is supported by Ubuntu 10.10+, we can try to add the modules that will make it work in the next release, but we will need the numeric hardware code described below. You can obtain this code using the hardware examination tool from within Redo Backup, or you can provide us with the output from the following command from any Linux live CD (e.g. Ubuntu 10.10):
$ lspci -nnv
(Please note that the lspci command is not included in Redo, since a hardware examination tool is already provided.) After running this command, you will see something like:
00:11.0 SATA controller [0106]: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800
SATA Controller [IDE mode] [1002:4390] (prog-if 01)
The only important part is 1002:4390. This will identify the module for your exact device. Please do not open an issue requesting support without providing this code! And remember, this project isn't about providing support for some obscure network card; that's what we rely on Ubuntu for—consider opening a bug report with Ubuntu or Google for some answers.
Report a Bug
If you are fairly certain that you've encountered a bug that you can reliably reproduce, and it is not the expected behavior, then we would encourage you to take a moment and provide us with the information we need to fix it. Your participation ensures a better project that we all benefit from!
To run Redo Backup in debug mode to see the specific error message that caused your problem, read the FAQ above. Remember that Redo Backup is simply a front end, and Partclone is the actual program doing the work; if you run Partclone from the command line, you should get the same error, which we will need a bug report for.
- Submit a Bug Report
Support
If you have questions, suggestions, or requests (rather than an actual bug report) please go to the Redo Backup forum on SourceForge, where you can participate in existing discussions or open a new topic.