Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[shane2peru]

It claims that that is installed? All I need to type in the command line is

gst-register

I tried that and sudo before it. Nothing. Maybe I need to un-install and re-install these programs to get them to work right? I don't know, any other ideas? Thanks.

Shane

[henshu70]

Hi there,

Great guide! I am completely new to Ubuntu and Linux so I really appreciate there is a very simple way to backup your installation. That way I do not have to reinstall again and again. The whole backup went fine, however, when I tried to restore the system, I ran into serious problems. Again, everything went well until:

sys/module/rfcomm/sections/.strtab
tar: sys/module/rfcomm/sections/.strtab: Cannot open: File exists
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

And the whole process is finished automatically. This happens whether I run it from booted system or 'failsafe Terminal'. Does anybody know how to overcome this problem? Can also somebody give an instruction how to restore from Live CD (absolute beginners please)?

Thanks

[Renko]

I did use this backup method this weekend on Suse with TAR (GNU) 1.15.1. The documentation how it is in the topicstart is broken for 1.15.1, it will create a corrupt unusable backup.

See this:
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2005-10/msg00956.html

This is a right command to backup:

tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

instead of

tar cvpzf backup.tgz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys

With the wrong command, TAR1.15.1 ignores the 'exclude' options so it will stop in the sys dir (then your backup is incomplete). In case it doesn't stop it will continue, on the end you get the following error:

tar: --exclude=test1: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

I'm useing the commands 'time' and 'nice' too now. 'time' tells how long it did take to create the backup, 'nice' sets the CPU proriority on low, so the backup process does not interupt other applications.

time nice -n +15 tar cvpzf /backup/290106.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/media --exclude=/windows /

Perhaps does Ubuntu use another version of TAR where the 'wrong' command will be accepted. Anyway, I think it's wise to warn you to prevent huge troubles.

[slim_chiply]

Renko appears to be correct with this. I found the same problem with Breezy. I was backing up my home directory and did an --exclude=.Trash. I happened to notice .Trash in the output while it was doing the tar. I followed Renko's suggestion and it no longer ignored the --exclude.

[jerome bettis]

i've been developing 2 python scripts for awhile now to legimately backup and restore. it's a pretty nice system but i haven't used it with ubuntu yet. it's a pain to type all of those commands and usually nothing goes right. this is supposed to solve that problem ..

i'm going to retool them a bit and when they're ready i'll post them. basically the idea is you boot into knoppix, mount some other drive to store the tarballs on and type one command. it tarballs all your partitions individually, copies the MBR, partition table, fstab and whatever else. then the restore script asks you what to restore.

it worked in gentoo but ubuntu is a little different. and it's not interactive yet, once i get that going i'll post them, probably in a few days or so.

[]Nbx*cmD[]

Hmm i find there's something missing in this HowTo, once we have the backup file we would want to have it saved out the computer, so i suggest using multicd (apt-get install multicd) which is a ~20kb utility which works awesome.

[zasf]

Excellent guide, I love the idea that you can save your system and restore it later without the hassle to go trought an installation process and all the consequent customization.

I followed this howto on my system, here is a brief resume: zipping 2gb of fresh dapper flight3 install took 30 min on my 2GHz centrino and resulted in a 500mb bz2 file. Unzipping took 15 min.

There are some corrections wich I would make on the first post:

• the tar command should be corrected, if don't put '/' at the end of the command, '--exclude' doesn't work, this determinated a big loss of time for me. The tar command seems to be different, according to ubuntu version, thus a distinguish should be made.
• including /dev doesn't result in doubling the zipped file as posted by kvidell, that message scared me a little, it could be nice to ask who posted it to delete it as it's very early in the thread and imho a lot of people read it.
• it is wise to check the size of /tmp, purge it if necessary and then include it, otherwise you incour in the '10 sec section' error as poste by Rehevkor and you have to do other manual activities. On my system /tmp is cleaned at every boot, so it could be a nice idea to perform the zip command right after boot.

Thanks!

[porcho]

Hey, I've repartitioned my HDD, and backing up/restoring my system as explained surely saved me a lot of time. Excellent guide!!!
Here's a brief resume of what I did:

a) Backed up my system as explained (I'm using Breezy), placing the source directory at the end of the tar command so that the exclude options would work (as explained in this thread);
b)Installed Windows XP;
c) Repartitioned my HDD using Breezy Install CD partitioner;
d) Restored the backup, using the --same-owner option in tar as advised by some users in this thread. I've created the same users after installing, so that wasn't a problem for me when restoring;
e) Commited some mistakes that made me spent some time figuring out what happened!

I'm a real newbie. I'll report the errors so that others may avoid them in the future:

i) Overwrite the /etc/fstab file with the one from the previous installation: that's not a problem as long as you don't change your partition table after backing up. Well, I did! I had to fix it by hand afterwards, following this guide and this one.

So, when restoring after repartitioning, be sure not to overwrite the /etc/fstab file!

ii)Overwrite the /boot/grub/menu.lst file (GRUB menu entries) with the one from the previous installation: as with the fstab file, you're most likely to get a correctly configured GRUB after Ubuntu installation. Overwriting GRUB menu entries file with the previous one may prevent your system from booting in an OS; because the partition numbers might not match with the current ones.

So, when restoring after repartitioning, be sure not to overwrite the /boot/grub/menu.lst file!

Well, that's it. Thank you all!

[entryname]

Hello.

What I'd ideally like to do is not put a large backup file on the hard disk, which has some value due to the "whoops I didn't meant to do that" scenario, but to back up the whole lot to a set of CDs the first one of which is bootable, so that you only have to boot from the first disk and then keep feeding it till it runs out of disks. In short, the same as "Image for Windows" does.

I'm not clear from your how to on how I get this large file onto a set of CDs.

I did try Mondo which looked like it did what I wanted, but it appeared to complain about a syntax error in Mindi. I then tried downloading and compiling the current version but that wouldn't compile, apparently having problems with compilers (I tried two or three). I then tried BackupPC but that refused to configure and I can't in any case find either the file or a menu entry to run it with, so I guess I'll have to give up on that as well and take if off again. I had a look at ghost for linux (G4L) which appears to be a 28MB download with an ISO option. I did baulk at this, especially as the CD drive making the backups would be a USB external.

Can the how to be amended to either include or point at some means of making disk images of linux systems, or at least a statement that this isn't possible and the nearest to it that can be done i.e. backup onto a set of CDs/DVDs?

Out of interest, suppose I were to copy files directly onto CDs by dragging and dropping using Graveman, and then after the disaster boot from a live CD and then copy the files from the CDs back onto a blank hard disk. Would this work, or would system files not have copied due to being in use etc?

Out of further interest, is Graveman equivalent to K3B, and would K3B run under gnome? (sorry for all the questions)

[Copter]

This didn't work for me in Breezy either. I posted a thread about it and the solution was to put the source directory at the end of the command. Using the command you have above, you would change it to read as follows:

Here's a link to my thread if you want more detail, but this change should take care of it. http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=70566

thnx! i was wondering whats going wrong here

copter :]