backup entire system

[kitepilot at kitepilot.com]

I have cloned and restored 2464720174+1 systems with:
rsync -vaxHXY --checksum /path1 /path2 /path3 someone at remotebox:/mybackup 

The 'x' constrain the sweep to a partition to avoid memory directories 
(/proc, /dev, /sys) which forces to explicitly name every mounted directory 
to copy. 

Then you can 'restore' with:
rsync -vaxHXY --checksum someone at remotebox:/mybackup /
All the options are important (except '-v'), but specially '-H' *HAS* to be 
there if you are cloning directories with kernel files or the resulting 
system will eventually become unstable.
Free advise, can't sue me...   :)
YMMV
ET 

PS: If you have any question,
you will get any answer. 

 


Michael Havens writes: 

> I got things just the way I want them. How do I make a miiror image of my
> hard drive? dd? Or is there a more user friendly way? I kinda want to do it
> like a raid  would do it. You know.... where I would just recopy the image
> if my computer gets corrupted and it would be like the day I made the
> image...... hmmmm.... google it! I found system rescue cd! (
> http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page) DOes this sound good? What do you all
> recommend? You know, on the first page about this one of the programs is
> partimage and they say that one of the limitations of it is that it does
> not support ext4 filesystem. hmmmmm.... after a bit of reading me thinks
> this doesn't work with ext4 even though the 'Main Page' says it does. Do
> any of you know any differently?..... hmmmmm..... I've been looking but all
> of the copy programs say  they support ext2 & 3 but not 4. What do you say? 
> 
> -- 
> :-)~MIKE~(-: