Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[slalomchip]

This procedure to backup my Ubuntu laptop worked great under 9.10. After upgrading to Lucid, however, I receive an error statement at the same location each and every time. The error says

"tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors".

The last file listed in all cases is /boot/grub/915resolution.mod, which is the last file in /boot/grub/ that it backs up. I excluded 915resolution.mod from the backup and the procedure erred again at the last file of the same directory.

Does anyone know why I'm getting the tar error?

[jesrani]

Hello, I have recently made a fresh install of 10.04 LTS and here is how I backup.
My main disk has 2 partitions. The / and /home are on the same partition and I have mounted /Data on other partition to put non-system data (documents etc).
I have another HDD mounted as /Backup
To backup the main partition I use "PartImage" program after booting from PartedMagic CD or USB and this is backed up onto the backup disk.
I backup the /Data folder onto the backup disk using "Simple Backup" software from within Ubuntu with a daily schedule.
Earlier, when I was using 8.04LTS, I had /home on a separate partition but I feel it is better to have this in the main partition only and make image every month. I have successfully restored 8.04LTS earlier but if the /home partition is on separate partition and some software have been installed/removed after taking image of main partition, then I think some settings are lost. Not too sure as I am not Linux expert and the PC is used only for backing up Windows Shares.

[slalomchip]

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

[sparker1]

Hi Slalomchip,


I believe the guide says you can usually ignore this message.
EDIT2:
At the end of the process you might get a message along the lines of 'tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors' or something, but in most cases you can just ignore that.

[slalomchip]

Thanks for the info. I'm a little leery of any process that ends with an error statement, but I appreciate the response.

[Francium]

I am have installed lucid lynx recently, and i went to recovery mode terminal as root and run "tar xvp..." but i received the same error massage while trying to restore my system :
"tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors"
and i think howto said that if you received errors in the backup process forgot it, not in restoring. and i am sure that it's not restored!
after all " tar xvp... " perhaps can overwrite old files but how can it remove the new files that created after backup?
am i done something wrong or this method don't work in 10.04? is anybody restored his/her system successfully by this method while running 10.04?

[newb85]

I am have installed lucid lynx recently, and i went to recovery mode terminal as root and run "tar xvp..." but i received the same error massage while trying to restore my system :
"tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors"
and i think howto said that if you received errors in the backup process forgot it, not in restoring. and i am sure that it's not restored!
after all " tar xvp... " perhaps can overwrite old files but how can it remove the new files that created after backup?
am i done something wrong or this method don't work in 10.04? is anybody restored his/her system successfully by this method while running 10.04?

The tar -x command does not remove any files. It merely unpacks the files in your backup, overwriting files already on your computer with the same name & location as ones in the backup.

To ensure that files newer than the most recent backup are removed, you would basically need to erase everything prior to using tar -x. If you're using tar to backup and restore the entire system, that means you have to erase files that will render your system temporarily inoperable. So, you probably need to boot from a Live CD, erase the harddrive partition(s) in question (without erasing the backup files), and perform tar -x while still running on the Live CD. Then your system should be restored and operable again.

Hope that helps!

(Heliode, if you're still watching this thread, please add something to this effect to your original post.)

[newb85]

I guess I was wrong. Tar can by made to remove files that are not in the archive by including the "-G"
argument during extraction. This should be faster and should not require booting from a LiveCD.

[piratesmack]

I wrote a very simple shell script to automatically back-up partitions with tar. It only backs up one partition at a time, and will automatically exclude files located on other partitions.

I mostly made it for personal use, but if anybody is interested, here it is.

#!/bin/bash

set -e

# this script requires dialog
if ! which dialog 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then
  read -p "Do you want to install dialog now? (y/n): " REPLY
  case $REPLY in
    y)
      sudo apt-get update
      sudo apt-get install dialog
    ;;
    *)
      echo "Cannot continue; this script uses dialog to generate menus" >&2
      exit 1
    ;;
  esac
fi


# detect mount point of a partition
detect_mountpt() {
  mount | grep "^$1" | cut -d' ' -f3
}

# list devices mounted on folders inside a partition
list_mounted_under() {
  mount | grep -v "^$1" | grep "$2" | cut -d' ' -f3
}

# list all mounted partitions
list_mounted_parts() {
  CNT=0
  mount | grep '^/dev' | cut -d' ' -f1 | while read line; do
    CNT=$(( $CNT + 1 ))
    echo "$CNT $line"
  done
}

MNT_PARTS="$(list_mounted_parts)"
ANSWER=$(dialog --stdout --menu "Select the partition to back up" 0 0 0 $MNT_PARTS)
PART=$(echo "$MNT_PARTS" | grep "^$ANSWER" | cut -d' ' -f2)
MNTPT=$(detect_mountpt $PART)

# exclude folders with another device mounted on them
# this includes /proc, /sys, /media/disk, etc
for e in $(list_mounted_under $PART $MNTPT); do
  EXCLUDES="$EXCLUDES --exclude=$e/*"
done

BACK_NAME="$(basename $PART)-$(date +%F).tar.gz"
BACK_FULL_PATH="$(dialog --stdout --inputbox "Where do you want to create the back up?" 0 0 "$(pwd)/$BACK_NAME")"

# also add backup to exclude list
EXCLUDES="$EXCLUDES --exclude=$BACK_FULL_PATH"

( cd $MNTPT
  FILES="$(ls -A | tr '\n' ' ')"
  sudo tar cvpzf $BACK_FULL_PATH $EXCLUDES $FILES 
)

echo
echo "Backup $BACK_FULL_PATH created"

exit 0

[Francium]

I guess I was wrong. Tar can by made to remove files that are not in the archive by including the "-G"
argument during extraction. This should be faster and should not require booting from a LiveCD.

thanks a lot. I will try that, but i should transfer my files somewhere safe, because if i removed all files and still couldn't restore do you know what? i am a dead man!