Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[El_Belgicano]

You don't even need a fresh install. Just format the drive and extract the tar from the livecd, then grub-install.

It depends on what you include in your tgz archive, since I use some "--exclude" in the backup process, I tend to do a fresh install (which reformats along the way too) doing so avoid having me to recreate directories manually or to backup some crap...

[Jonny87]

Ok so I was using this tar method for a while and had had some success with it, until not to long ago when I had to restore it because I was making some changes to my setup and for some reason it didn't work properly. wouldn't completely boot or log me in. it just kept dropping me down to the command line. The only cause that I could think of was that I was restoring to a different HDD but I changed the necessary UUID in fstab and the grub.cfg to the new HDD but still no success. In the end I just grit my teeth and started from scratch.
But I'm wondering now could it possibly have been caused from using the system at the time of backup?

[El_Belgicano]

Ok so I was using this tar method for a while and had had some success with it, until not to long ago when I had to restore it because I was making some changes to my setup and for some reason it didn't work properly. wouldn't completely boot or log me in. it just kept dropping me down to the command line. The only cause that I could think of was that I was restoring to a different HDD but I changed the necessary UUID in fstab and the grub.cfg to the new HDD but still no success. In the end I just grit my teeth and started from scratch.
But I'm wondering now could it possibly have been caused from using the system at the time of backup?

What were the exact commands/steps you took to backup/extract?
Did you make a fresh minimal install before extracting?
Did you run "sudo update-grub"?

[Ecip]

i dont know if this has been mentioned before, but i use a USB external drive, and therefore I also exclude the /media folder since otherwise it would backup that drive as well...

[Jonny87]

What were the exact commands/steps you took to backup/extract?
Did you make a fresh minimal install before extracting?
Did you run "sudo update-grub"?

The following is the script that I ran.

#Back up the root drive.
zenity --info --title="System Backup" --text='System back up of the root directory begun!' | tar -cvpjf /home/jonny/.BackUps/backup_root-desktop.tar.bz2 --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home --exclude=/media / | cat > /home/jonny/.BackUps/Root_Backup_Log.txt 

zenity --info --title="System Backup" --text='System back up of the home directory begun!' | tar -cvpjf /home/jonny/.BackUps/backup_home-desktop.tar.bz2 --exclude=/home/jonny/.BackUps --exclude=/shared --exclude=/*/Videos /home | cat > /home/jonny/.BackUps/Home_Backup_Log.txt

#Display a message to incate that the backup has finished.
zenity --info --title="System Backup" --text='System back up has completed!'

To restore it I manually ran the above changed to to the extraction equivalent.
I tried both extracting over a fresh install and to a blank formatted partition. I also tried running the "sudo update-grub".

I am right in saying that using the it is fine to use the system while running tar aren't I?

[El_Belgicano]

The following is the script that I ran.

#Back up the root drive.
zenity --info --title="System Backup" --text='System back up of the root directory begun!' | tar -cvpjf /home/jonny/.BackUps/backup_root-desktop.tar.bz2 --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home --exclude=/media / | cat > /home/jonny/.BackUps/Root_Backup_Log.txt 

zenity --info --title="System Backup" --text='System back up of the home directory begun!' | tar -cvpjf /home/jonny/.BackUps/backup_home-desktop.tar.bz2 --exclude=/home/jonny/.BackUps --exclude=/shared --exclude=/*/Videos /home | cat > /home/jonny/.BackUps/Home_Backup_Log.txt

#Display a message to incate that the backup has finished.
zenity --info --title="System Backup" --text='System back up has completed!'

To restore it I manually ran the above changed to to the extraction equivalent.
I tried both extracting over a fresh install and to a blank formatted partition. I also tried running the "sudo update-grub".

I am right in saying that using the it is fine to use the system while running tar aren't I?

I think you should tar with "sudo", don't you see something referring to this being a problem in your log?
For your question, think about this: "you don't tie your shoes while walking do you? your heart is beating, you're breathing, but you're not walking." Same goes for the backup process on a "running" system.

[Jonny87]

I think you should tar with "sudo", don't you see something referring to this being a problem in your log?
For your question, think about this: "you don't tie your shoes while walking do you? your heart is beating, you're breathing, but you're not walking." Same goes for the backup process on a "running" system.

Sorry should have mentioned that it was run with root privileges.

[El_Belgicano]

Sorry should have mentioned that it was run with root privileges.

Any clue in the logs? try running it without the -v flag, so you only get the errors popping up and not a complete filelist.

[federal_topone]

thankyou for your guide. i'm newbie for linux..




syahmei.blogspot.com

[@nne]

Hi,

Thank you so much for this tutorial.

I've read on www.ubuntu-fr that using "sudo su" wasn't much wise ; I cannot say that I've understood why. They seem to imply that using "sudo -i" or "sudo -s" was preferable. So, what should we do?

Thank you for the answer.

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I'm on Ubuntu 10.10, gnome.