IP-address issues during restore

I recently accidently trashed a key directory on my linode, and I needed to restore it from the latest snapshot. I don't have enough disk space on my current linode, so I created a new linode and restored the snapshot to that new linode.

In doing so, I was assigned a new IP address, call it 20.30.40.50 for the purpose of this discussion. However, because this new linode was initialized from a snapshot of my current linode, the config files under /etc/network initialized it to come up with the IP address from my current linode … call it 10.20.30.40 for the purpose of this discussion.

Therefore, the new linode was inaccessible via its assigned IP address, 20.30.40.50.

I had to manually run ifconfig and route in order to change its IP address and gateway address to the new values, and even then, I still couldn't see the new linode from the internet via its 20.30.40.50 address, and I couldn't see the old linode (which was still up and running) from the new linode, under the address 10.20.30.40.

Luckily, from the new linode I could see another host of mine running on a completely different server, and I was able to scp the directory I needed to that remote host, and then scp it from there to my current linode in order to restore it.

But it seems to me that there must be a better way of doing this. The documentation here says to restore the backup to a new linode and then use utilities such asrsync or scp to access it. But that didn't work due to the new linode coming up with the old linode's IP address, despite it having been assigned a new IP address when I created that new linode. And the other problems I described above also prevented this documented restore procedure to work for me.

Can anyone explain how I'm supposed to do this kind of restore from a snapshot, and what are the recommended ways for dealing with the IP-address issues?

Thank you very much.

2 Replies

Turn on "Auto-config networking" for the linode and reboot. Or you could swap the IP addresses between the two and you should also be good to go that way.

Aha! Thank you very much.

I believe that the documentation for restoring snapshots to a linode (https://www.linode.com/docs/security/backups/download-backups-locally/) should be modified to mention that we should make sure that "Auto-config networking" is turned on for the new linode, because otherwise, it will come up with the current linode's IP information.

That detail would have saved me a lot of trouble.

I have an open ticket concerning this problem, and I will make that documentation-change suggestion there.

Reply

Please enter an answer
Tips:

You can mention users to notify them: @username

You can use Markdown to format your question. For more examples see the Markdown Cheatsheet.

> I’m a blockquote.

I’m a blockquote.

[I'm a link] (https://www.google.com)

I'm a link

**I am bold** I am bold

*I am italicized* I am italicized

Community Code of Conduct