Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[gopher38]

Hello. I've got a problem. I've used the commands on the first post of this thread in the past to restore an HP notebook with Ubuntu:
Archive
tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /
Restore
tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /

Worked great. But I've got a problem now on a different. I've got an eee, on which I put eeeUbuntu. I've an archive on disk that I want to restore, but it keeps dying saying that there's not enough space to copy a bunch of files and then completely giving up the ghost. Will not allow me to boot back in either.

Here's the deal. Those eee's don't have much space. There's only 4G. I think that the system occupied about 2G, which went down to 800M when tar'ed. If the restore just out and out clobbered the old files, it should fit back on, right? It seems as though tar isn't strictly overwriting the files, but somehow keeps them (temporarily?), effectively trying to put two OS's onto the machine, which runs out of room. I've tried looking through the tar man page, and tried to boot with LiveCD and delete all the files and then run tar, but that didn't work either. Same problem. I'm not sure that I succeeded in deleting the files either.

Anyone have any good ideas for me?

Thanks.

[forger]

try extracting using --overwrite

--overwrite overwrite existing files when extracting

tar xvpfz backup.tgz --overwrite -C /

By the way, are you using the above command *exactly* as it is written or..?

[davethewave83]

Hmm I backed up my system, formatted in LVM Encrypted mode, restored and now grub won't boot the system, I type Boot at "Grub" command prompt and it says the kernel must be loaded first. it's supposed to ask me for the LVM password

*edit* another problem with this method is that it does not keep the permissions, I am going in circles trying to figure out what to chmod all my files now because the permissions changed after extracting them from the backup.

[RavUn]

I'm planning on reinstalling everything on my laptop and want to know if this method still works? I see it's over 3 years old.

[scorp123]

I'm planning on reinstalling everything on my laptop and want to know if this method still works? I see it's over 3 years old.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=577

[otheracco]

I've made a backup and everything seemed to go OK. I did get the error right at the end but, like the guide says, I ignored it.

I'm having a lot of problems restoring onto an external USB disc with the following directive -

tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /mnt/ext

This is being run in a root shell, but I'm getting the following errors;
tar: cannot mkdir: no such file or directory
tar: cannot mkdir: input output error

Most of the I/O errors are in the /var/cache folder, but I haven't gotten past the folder yet, because it takes several minutes to timeout with the error on almost every file and I've ended up killing the process.
Since this is run as root, what can the problem be?

[scorp123]

I'm having a lot of problems restoring onto an external USB disc

And that external USB disk has been formatted with a Linux filesystem so it is capable to recreate the permissions and other special UNIX-style attributes of each file?

[otheracco]

And that external USB disk has been formatted with a Linux filesystem so it is capable to recreate the permissions and other special UNIX-style attributes of each file?

It was a bit by bit copy done with HDCLONE. It was showing as ext3 under gparted.

I rewrote ext3 to it anyway and now it's working great!
Thanks for the suggestion, but strange problem anyway.

[RavUn]

I can't seem to get this to work. I backed everything up and tried restoring with

tar xvpfz backup.tgz --overwrite -C /

I made sure I ran it as root and had the backup file stored in the root dir. It would start unpacking then my screen flashes a few times then gets stuck at a screen that says "checking battery state... [OK], running scripts... [OK]" I reboot and it copied some files over because I see the kernel I was using in the GRUB menu but it doesn't boot up. It just goes to a command prompt with (initdram).

I tried it without the --overwrite also and it doesn't flash the screen or anything and it completes, but when I reboot I still get the same error with it not booting and going to the command prompt.

Any ideas what's up?

[scorp123]

It would start unpacking then my screen flashes a few times then gets stuck at a screen that says "checking battery state... [OK], running scripts... [OK]" I reboot and it copied some files over because I see the kernel I was using in the GRUB menu but it doesn't boot up. It just goes to a command prompt with (initdram).

Your PC crashes when you unpack a tar.gz file?