HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

[Qqmike]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

An interjection while Integr8e is testing . . .

Interesting how things come up and around, the timing of things. This topic of back-ups seems to be all around me right now, everywhere. A Linux pal has been trying to get me into Partimage (or one of the other image back-ups). He looked at this thread and reminded me how he recently fried his whole Kubuntu, and with Partimage on his archive, he was back up clicking in 5 minutes. Is that even relevant here? The only thing I know about Partimage is the web address.

[Snowhog]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

"Part(image), part ...."

[integr8e]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

I've contemplated testing it, but you can only backup unmounted file systems; I've burned a Live CD, but haven't gotten around to using it yet.

[Qqmike]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

Partimage. I didn’t try it out yet—I have a couple other projects pending just now—but I read some of the documentation, and this looks fairly straightforward, quite do-able, with the usual reserve that there may be a few trivial details and tweaks to work through to get it up and running, but even then, nothing stands out as a show-stopper.

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

On the left sidebar, Documentation or Handbook shows you the show.
I see people using this in the forums. Other humans probably can do so also.

We keep telling folks to “Shrink your Windows partition in GParted, then etc., etc.” To be safe, one should first have a back-up of the Windows if there’s any issue of problems reinstalling Windows (like no distribution CD). Ditto for any Kubuntu instance that may have important stuff in it.

[integr8e]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

@Qqmike, you may want to check out SystemRescueCD (I believe there's a link to it from PartImage's site).

[Qqmike]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

Yes, I’ve used it. Lots of utilities included. In fact, SGD has developed a package including it (in a multidistrox).

[IndyTim]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

I thought I'd jump in here for a few minutes on some of my Partimage experiences.

First off, I've been successfully using it for the past 2 years or so. My environment is multiple Lx ops (Kubuntu 6.04, Kubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 7.01, Fluxbuntu 7.10, Puppy V?, and Win2k Pro).

On a weekly basis, I backup all of my working ops partitions to both a partition on my second H/D (320G SATA) and an external 320G SATA. This provides me with a double redundancy for recovery should things go really nasty.

Because I'm in a multiple ops environment, I use Fluxbuntu to run all of the Partimage partitions from (except Fluxbuntu ). My process is to first rifle through each of my ops and do the updates streaming from the repositories. I only do this once a week and immediately before I start the backup sequence. Once I've gone through all of the updates, then I'll boot to Fluxbuntu and start backing up the partitions.

This whole process usually takes less than an hour to complete for me (I also backup dedicated /home partitions for each ops).

If things go badly on a specific ops and I need to recover from a backup, I just boot to Fluxbuntu and launch Partimage. Identify the partition to re-build and the backup file source. It usually takes about 4-5 minutes to rebuild a 10G partition.

A cautionary note on backing up NTFS partitions. It is still (and probably will remain experimental) to back up and recover NTFS partitions via Partimage. Haven't had to do it yet so I can't add any credance to this.

Hope this helps.

IndyTim

[Fintan]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

@Fintan, I tried to use AptOnCD, but it seems to allow me to only backup what's located in my /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory, and I clean that each time I update/install software. I would have to re-download everything again if this is the case; do you know a way I can use AptOnCD without having to do that (thus the reason I learned how to MAKE A LIST Grin)?

Well in that case you can use the add button to add whatever you need to

[MoonRise]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

When I click the Add button, it looks for DEBs specifically located on the computer. Can you get it to retrieve from the Repos?

[Fintan]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

You might have a look here:
https://answers.launchpad.net/aptoncd/+question/4931

maybe that will work

[MoonRise]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

Thanks!!

The below is from that link so that others are aware:

From the help file:

The Download Repository module is a little unstable in this release. It was
disabled in the APTonCD GUI and only can be called by command line (--download). Use with your own risk.

Hope this helps

Regards,

Denham.

Well, unfortunately that didn't appear to work either . I'll just keep digging.

[integr8e]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

I recently learned GParted provides a frontend to the dd command you can use to backup your info before you wipe a partition. That, too, is pretty cool 8)

[Qqmike]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

...speaking of cool,

dd command: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=362506
A very interesting tutorial on the dd command -- some surprising dd applications.

[integr8e]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

Awesome! I was actually gonna' ask if anybody knew of an excellent tutorial on the dd command; thanks

[MoonRise]

Re: HowTo: Backup & Restore your system my way ~[:^D

...speaking of cool,

dd command: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=362506
A very interesting tutorial on the dd command -- some surprising dd applications.

Thanks!