Backing up An Entire System

Backing up An Entire System

[John J. Boyer]

Hello, I am running a dual-boot machine. Linux and Windows are on separate 
drives. My Windows committed suicide, so I'm not worrying about it until I 
get a Windows job. However, the Windows drive has lots of room. I would 
like to back up my entire Linux system on the Windows drive without having 
to change it from VFAT to EXT2. It still has some good data on it. I would 
like to be able to put the backup into a directory, with the proper 
subdirectories and no compression, so I can refer to it easily. Further 
down the road, I would like to burn backup cd's for my Linux system. 
however, there is probably more data than will fit on one CD, even if it 
is compressed. Hw can I do this?
Thanks.
John
 

-- 
Computers to Help People, Inc.
http://www.chpi.org
825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703

Re: Backing up An Entire System

[Rafael Skodlar,,,]

I strongly suggest you do not depend on windows partition to backup your
Linux files. If windows crashed it's very likely that the partition is
messed up and you will lose everything if you handle it with another OS.

You don't need to backup entire Linux. What I normaly do is tar /etc
/root, /home, and /usr/local to a spare drive or partition. /var is
backed up only for my web server. Every once in a while I put tar files
on tape. I created a script that creates backup file of my important
home directories. Files that can be downloaded from the Internet or CD
and temporarily kept in my home are never backed up.

Since the backup is greater than one CD lately, I split the directories
so that it fits on two CDs. My whole home is probably over 4GB right
now. The important thing is to organize your home space into logical
subdirectories for easy find and backups.

No need to backup my tmp, var, rpm, tar, and such subdirectories of
files I can find on the net. I do have a file that has the names of all
the files in my home. The easiest way to do that is with command 

tree ~ > home.tree

which keeps all the names. It's a simple ASCII tree of file names. That
goes into my backup for future reference if needed.

If you are serious about computer use keep one backup somewhere else,
with your friends, car, etc. In case you don't trust others or have
privacy concerns, use encryption before you create a backup.

to create identical directory structure on another partition I use
(cd /sourcedir; tar cfp - somesubdir) | (cd /destdir; tar xfp -)

One last thing, try to convert to ext3 partition format. It's safer that
way.

I hope it helps.

-- 
Rafael

On Sun, Aug 11, 2002 at 09:28:27AM -0500, John J. Boyer wrote:
> Hello, I am running a dual-boot machine. Linux and Windows are on separate 
> drives. My Windows committed suicide, so I'm not worrying about it until I 
> get a Windows job. However, the Windows drive has lots of room. I would 
> like to back up my entire Linux system on the Windows drive without having 
> to change it from VFAT to EXT2. It still has some good data on it. I would 
> like to be able to put the backup into a directory, with the proper 
> subdirectories and no compression, so I can refer to it easily. Further 
> down the road, I would like to burn backup cd's for my Linux system. 
> however, there is probably more data than will fit on one CD, even if it 
> is compressed. Hw can I do this?
> Thanks.
> John
>  

Re: Backing up An Entire System

[John]

On Sunday 11 August 2002 22:28, John J. Boyer wrote:
> Hello, I am running a dual-boot machine. Linux and Windows are on separate 
> drives. My Windows committed suicide, so I'm not worrying about it until I 
> get a Windows job. However, the Windows drive has lots of room. I would 
> like to back up my entire Linux system on the Windows drive without having 
> to change it from VFAT to EXT2. It still has some good data on it. I would 
> like to be able to put the backup into a directory, with the proper 
> subdirectories and no compression, so I can refer to it easily. Further 
> down the road, I would like to burn backup cd's for my Linux system. 
> however, there is probably more data than will fit on one CD, even if it 
> is compressed. Hw can I do this?
> Thanks.

You can just copy the files over, but don't do that as FATxx filesystems don't 
maintain Unix/Linux metadata.

Better alternatives are
1) Use tar (or maybe afio). Examination of the contents is maybe a little more 
difficult.
2) Make CD images (ISO files). You can mount these and see the contents just 
like you can a physical CD, and if you use mkisofs with the right options it 
preserves the Linux metadata.

If you want to backup to CD, you can do as in suggestion 2, making sure the 
images are small enough to fit on your CDs. You can burn them using cdrecord.

If you want to maximise the data per CD, use afio. It has options to compress 
the backup, and to limit the size of the individual files it creates, and the 
size limit you specify is the media size (not so for tar and other backup 
programs).





-- 


Cheers
John.

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Re: Backing up An Entire System

[James R. Van Zandt]

John -

You could use the loop device to create an ext2 filesystem within a
file in the vfat filesystem.  See the mount man page for details.  Of
course, this will be slower than a regular ext2 or vfat filesystem,
and no more dependable than the vfat filesystem.  You may also have
trouble with the max file size on the vfat filesystem.

	 - Jim Van Zandt


>From: "John J. Boyer" <director@chpi.org>
>Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 09:28:27 -0500 (CDT)
>X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=7.0 tests= version=2.20
>X-Spam-Level: 
>
>Hello, I am running a dual-boot machine. Linux and Windows are on separate 
>drives. My Windows committed suicide, so I'm not worrying about it until I 
>get a Windows job. However, the Windows drive has lots of room. I would 
>like to back up my entire Linux system on the Windows drive without having 
>to change it from VFAT to EXT2. It still has some good data on it. I would 
>like to be able to put the backup into a directory, with the proper 
>subdirectories and no compression, so I can refer to it easily. Further 
>down the road, I would like to burn backup cd's for my Linux system. 
>however, there is probably more data than will fit on one CD, even if it 
>is compressed. Hw can I do this?
>Thanks.
>John

dialup router or wireless

[Ron Marriage]

Hi all,

Currently have two computers networked through a hub.
I have a dialup connection and would like to find a router
that would work with a standard external modem.

I want a router so that I don't have to leave one machine on
all the time.

Usually only one computer is online at a time.  
One runs RH 7.3 the other duelboots XP and RH 7.3 although
this machine is in linux 95% of the time.

I'd appreciate others recommendations and routers they've
had success with.
Thanks
Ron
-- 
Ron Marriage
Home Page http://www.seidata.com/~marriage/
Blind Links http://www.seidata.com/~marriage/rblind.html
Linux  http://www.seidata.com/~seilug/
Email  mailto:marriage@seidata.com