Guidelines for recovering a bpcbackup, with early thoughts on the operation of

a scripted bpcrestore, which would be more automated.

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+To restore a backup made via bpcdump:
+
+ - Attach the external sata drive
+ - sudo esata mount
+ - Select the backup to restore, for example ve1200-20080605
+ - Examine the contents of /media/esata/ve1200-20080605/info
+ - Ensure a partition (preferably an LVM2 LV) exists to restore into, and that
+   its size is at least as large as the size identified in the 'info' file.
+   Note the partition's device name, for example /dev/vg0/ve1200.
+ - md5sum /media/esata/ve1200-20080605/image
+   Verify the above command outputs the same signature as contained within
+   /media/esata/ve1200-20080605/image.md5sum.  If they are not the same,
+   the selected image has become corrupted and another backup should be
+   selected to restore.
+ - dd_rescue -Ay 8192 /media/esata/ve1200-20080605/image /dev/vg0/ve1200
+ - Examine the output from dd_rescue; ensure there are no errors reported and
+   that it returns without error.  This command will take some time.
+ - dd if=/dev/vg0/ve1200 bs=<imageblocksize> | md5sum
+   The emitted MD5 signature should match
+   /media/esata/ve1200-20080605/image.md5sum.
+ - The partition is now ready to be mounted for use by the BackupPC VE.  It may
+   be necessary to create the VE's conf file in /etc/vz/conf.
+ - sudo vzctl start 1200
+ - Verify correct operation of the restored BackupPC VE.
+
+This process will be replaced by a script, bpcrestore:
+
+ - To restore an old version of VE 1200 over itself:
+   bpcrestore /media/esata/ve1200-20080605
+   (this command will create VE 1200 if it doesn't exist on the HN on which
+    bpcrestore was executed.)
+
+ - To restore an old version of VE 1200, implicitly creating a new VE 1201:
+   bpcrestore /media/esata/ve1200-20080605 1201
+
+ - Perhaps the script will instead be bpcbackup --restore, akin to vzdump's
+   operation.