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    #1

    Partitioning Question

    Hi. Glad this forum is back up.
    I have a question.
    I love to play around with Linux and do so on a regular basis. I do backups but inevitably I hose my system and lose everything. Now I have a new computer and I loaded on Hardy and everything is working beautifully. e-Mail works,graphics works,printing and scanning works. In short everthing is working great. My question is : Is there a way to make a copy of my system the way it is and burn it to cd or dvd as an image or iso and then if I hose my system I would simply boot from the cd/dvd and get back to this state with Kubuntu working fine but with all my email,printer,scanner etc. all intact and ready to go? Is partitioning an exsisting system the way to go?

    This is how my system looks currently.

    Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
    Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
    Disk identifier: 0x80000000

    Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
    /dev/sda1 * 1 59672 479315308+ 83 Linux
    /dev/sda2 59673 60801 9068692+ 5 Extended
    /dev/sda5 59673 60801 9068661 82 Linux swap / Solaris


    Thanks in advance for the help.
    harecanada
    harecanada<br />Running Kubuntu Hardy Heron<br />Dell Inspiron 531<br />500 gb HD<br />3 gb RAM
    Tags: None
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    #2
    Re: Partitioning Question

    Maybe this:

    http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05414


    Not a personal endorsement -- I only back up data.
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      #3
      Re: Partitioning Question

      I have had good luck with the mondo archive suite. I have actually used it to migrate an existing installation to new and different hardware.

      I used mondoarchive to back up the existing system. It took I think five or six dvds. Then I booted the new box with dvd #1. I got a login prompt where I repartitioned and reformatted the new drive to my liking, then told mondo to restore and started feeding it dvds. When if finished it asked if I wanted to boot into my restored system and I hit enter. To my amazement and delight, it booted to my existing system as if nothing had changed. It was hands down the most pain-free migration I have ever done.

      http://www.mondorescue.org/about.shtml

      I'm pretty sure there is a mondo package for hardy. Use your favorite package manager to search for mondo. I think it might be split up into two or three packages. I always install all of them just in case. It has saved my bacon more than once.
      linux since slack 2. kde since beta 1. kubuntu since hardy.
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        #4
        Re: Partitioning Question

        That looks interesting. I may have to rethink using bacula.
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          #5
          Re: Partitioning Question

          This is great guys. Thanks and I'll let you know how I do.
          I'm glad this forum is back. I tried other forums but this one feels like home.
          Thanks again.
          harecanada<br />Running Kubuntu Hardy Heron<br />Dell Inspiron 531<br />500 gb HD<br />3 gb RAM
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            #6
            Re: Partitioning Question

            Hi budr,
            I went to the Mondo site. I've used "sudo apt-get install mondo" to get the dependencies but I don't know what to do under the download section? I clicked on Ubuntu 8.04 but I get a tremendous list of links and don't know what to do there. Can you tell me how to proceed?
            Thanks
            harecanada<br />Running Kubuntu Hardy Heron<br />Dell Inspiron 531<br />500 gb HD<br />3 gb RAM
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              #7
              Re: Partitioning Question

              Originally posted by mando_hacker
              That looks interesting. I may have to rethink using bacula.
              I looked at Bacula but in order to maximize it the best config would be a PC on which Bacula is run, one or more PCs that are destinations for the data being stored, and the rest of the LAN, be they Windows or Linux. The commercial version has proprietary parts... i.e., not all of it is GPL.

              I developed some bash scripts and put them under the control of cron. If it was Sun at 1AM cron created a full tar backup of all of my data. If it was 1AM on any other day of the week cron created an incremental backup. My destination was a second PC running Linux (could be a second HD) which was mounted as an NFS partition. The scripts and the backed up data were stored on it. Each tar file was compressed and had the date and time of the backup along with "full" or "part" in the name, but that info is also in the time stamp because of when the scripts were run by cron. Tar's command string used sparse to avoid huge tar files. If particular files didn't change over a week then it could be restored from the last weekend backup, otherwise the incremental tars would have to be applied to reach the point of the data loss.
              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                #8
                Re: Partitioning Question

                mando_hacker:
                mondo might be overkill for routine backups. It's actually a little on the tedious side, feeding it dvds one at a time, but for its primary purpose, disaster recovery, I don't know of anything better.

                harecanada:
                I think you've done it right.

                sudo apt-get install mondo

                ought to install everything you need. You could also install mondo-doc, but I think the documentation on their website is very good. I see also packages for mindy and mindy-busybox, which I think are for more specialized use. The mondo package ought to be all you really need.

                Once you have the package installed, just run mondoarchive and follow the prompts. The interface is curses/text, but it's pretty self-explanatory. You might read through the howto on their website.

                http://www.mondorescue.org/docs/mondorescue-howto.html

                I actually just followed the steps in the Quick Start section the first time I used it, and it just worked. The howto says to run it as root, but I'm thinking

                sudo mondoarchive

                would work just as well.
                linux since slack 2. kde since beta 1. kubuntu since hardy.
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                  #9
                  Re: Partitioning Question

                  I have a fairly high powered cluster that I use for bioinformatics research which I backup portions of regularly so I have been using bacula over the network for that and my workstation. If I were to use mondo I expect I would use an NFS mount to backup to. I sometimes think that bacula is overly complicated for my use and thought that mondo might be less so. The scripts are tempting.
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                    #10
                    Re: Partitioning Question

                    Hi budr,
                    I was running Mondo and doing the steps of the Quick Start and it came to the final step and said it may take a couple of hours. It didn't take very long at all but when I looked at the final output this is what I got:
                    Initializing...
                    See /var/log/mondoarchive.log for details of backup run.
                    Checking sanity of your Linux distribution
                    /sbin/mkfs.vfat
                    Filesystem 1048576-blocks Used Available Ca pacity Mounted on
                    /dev/sda1 464394 7675 433315 2% /
                    Done.
                    Execution run ended; result=1
                    Type 'less /var/log/mondoarchive.log' to see the output log
                    No request for dvds to burn to etc. Any idea of what I may have done wrong?
                    harecanada<br />Running Kubuntu Hardy Heron<br />Dell Inspiron 531<br />500 gb HD<br />3 gb RAM
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