// FIXME: Make this part more generic and add distribution information

= Getting started

== Software requirements
Relax-and-Recover aims to have as little dependencies as possible, however
over time certain capabilities were added using utilities and specific
features, causing older distributions to fall out of support. We try to avoid
this where practically possible and be conservative to add new dependencies.

The most basic requirement for Relax-and-Recover is having +bash+, and
ubiquitous Linux tools like:

 - dd (coreutils)
 - ethtool
 - file
 - grep
 - gzip
 - ip (iproute[2])
 - mount (util-linux-ng)
 - ps (procps)
 - sed
 - ssh (openssh-clients)
 - strings (binutils)
 - tar
 - ...

Optionally, some use-cases require other tools:

 - lsscsi and sg3_utils (for OBDR tape support)
 - mkisofs or genisoimage (for ISO output support)
 - syslinux (for ISO or USB output support)

In some cases having newer versions of tools may provide better support:

 - syslinux >= 4.00 (provides menu support)
 - parted

In case we are using +BACKUP=NETFS+ with nfs or cifs we might need also:

 - nfs-client
 - cifs-utils

== Distribution support
As a project our aim is not to exclude any distribution from being supported,
however (as already noted) some older distributions fell out of support over
time and there is little interest from the project or the community to spend
the effort to add this support.

On the other hand there is a larger demand for a tool like Relax-and-Recover
from the Enterprise Linux distributions, and as a result more people are
testing and contributing to support those distributions.

Currently we aim to support the following distributions by testing them
regularly:

 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux and derivatives: RHEL4, RHEL5 and RHEL6
 - SuSe SLES 10, 11, 12
 - Ubuntu LTS: 10.04 and 12.04

Distributions known to be 'unsupported' are:

 - Ubuntu LTS 8.04 (as it does not implement +grep -P+)


== Known limitations
Relax-and-Recover offers a lot of flexibility in various use-cases, however it
does have some limitations under certain circumstances:

 - Relax-and-Recover depends on the software of the running system. When
   recovering this system to newer hardware, it is possible that the hardware
   support of the original system does not support the newer hardware.
+
This problem has been seen when restoring an older RHEL4 with an older HP
Proliant Support Pack (PSP) to more recent hardware. This PSP did not detect
the newer HP SmartArray controller or its firmware.

 - Relax-and-Recover supports recovering to different hardware, but it cannot
   always automatically adapt to this new environment. In such cases it
   requires a manual intervention to eg.

   * modify the _disklayout.conf_ to indicate the number of controller, disks
     or specific custom desires during restore

   * reduce the partition-sizes/LV-sizes when restoring to smaller storage

   * pull network-media or configure the network interfaces manually

 - Depending on your back-up strategy you may have to perform actions, like:

   * insert the required tape(s)

   * perform commands to restore the backup


== Installation

=== From RPM packages
Simply install (or update) the provided packages using
the command: +rpm -Uhv rear-1.12.0svn497-0.1.noarch.rpm+

You can test your installation by running +rear dump+:

----
[root@system ~]# rear dump
Relax-and-Recover 1.12.0svn497 / 2011-07-11
Dumping out configuration and system information
System definition:
                                    ARCH = Linux-x86_64
                                      OS = GNU/Linux
                               OS_VENDOR = RedHatEnterpriseServer
                              OS_VERSION = 5.6
...
----

=== From DEB packages


=== From source

== File locations

== Quick demo
