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Thread: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

  1. #991
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
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    Hidden!

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    I admit to having not read all 99 previous pages of this thread.

    Instead of using tar or rsync for a full drive backup, I would use an imaging solution like Clonezilla. With this, you select either the whole drive or one or more partitions on the drive. No problem with excluding external drives. And if you need to restore, you can restore to bare metal - you don't need a working installation, just the Clonezilla disc.

    There are a couple of gotchas: for example you must not mount the external drive first - Clonezilla will make you select from unmounted drives to save the image on.

    You can download the Clonezilla Live CD, or certain other CDS that include it like PartedMagic.

  2. #992
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
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    Distro
    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    Quote Originally Posted by BarryM View Post
    Hello there, I hope someone out there can help me with this. I want to make a backup of my entire Ubuntu drive to an external (USB Drive). As far as I can gather, the method suggested by Heliode at the very start of this thread puts the backup on the desktop. Am I right there?

    I have got my external drive connected and mounted (it is a FreeAgent drive, and appears as "FreeAgent Drive" in the directory tree). I have managed to navigate to it via the Media directory (I found out that I needed to put the name in quotes for Ubuntu to recognise it in the root terminal).

    If I now want to make my backup, having got to the directory in the FreeAgent drive that I want to store the backup in, will it work with the "tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/... (exclude list) /"? How do I stop the contents of the FreeAgent drive being included in the tarball? Should I add --exclude="/media/FreeAgent Drive" in the exclude list?

    Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks
    just put --exclude="/media" ...in the exclude list, you don't want to backup ntfs partitions or cd/dvd-rom (if theres any) in your backup.

  3. #993
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
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    3

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    This totally worked for me!!! thanks and cheers.

    idn't get to try the right way as exactly in the tut.

    what i did

    went to vista - deleted ubuntu folder

    re-install from cd

    moved backup file to root

    followed the command in tut.

    rebooted

    it whined about something, so, did a 'long-hold' on power button to power down

    booted

    fine!

    so i've condensed your tutorial down to the bare essentials as i have used them. hope you don;t mind...

    first boot up from install disk as a visitor, then go to terminal and begin...

    ### become root
    sudo su

    ### cd into root(can go anywhere you want backup to end up, including remote or removable drives)
    cd /

    ### full backup command
    tar cvpzf backup.tgz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/host --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys --exclude=/media

    ### explanation
    "The 'tar' part is, obviously, the program we're going to use.

    'cvpfz' are the options we give to tar, like 'create archive' (obviously),
    'preserve permissions'(to keep the same permissions on everything the same), and 'gzip' to keep the size down.

    Next, the name the archive is going to get. backup.tgz in our example.

    Next comes the root of the directory we want to backup. Since we want to backup everything; /

    Now come the directories we want to exclude. We don't want to backup everything since some dirs aren't very useful to include. Also make sure you don't include the file itself, or else you'll get weird results.
    You might also not want to include the /mnt folder if you have other partitions mounted there or you'll end up backing those up too. Also make sure you don't have anything mounted in /media (i.e. don't have any cd's or removable media mounted). Either that or exclude /media.

    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."

    ### restore
    tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /

    ### warning
    "this will overwrite every single file on your partition with the one in the archive!"

    ### re-create excluded directories
    mkdir proc
    mkdir lost+found
    mkdir mnt
    mkdir sys
    etc...

    ### reboot

  4. #994
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
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    3

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    you can store the file on the seagate, but you have to copy it into file systems before doing the restore command. thats what i ended up doing anyway. all the best, this really does work.

  5. #995
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Burnham, England
    Beans
    60
    Distro
    Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    Many thanks to the various respondents on this. I successfully made the backup using tar. I did find it took rather a long time, especially with Olympus RAW pictures and a BBC iPlayer video, I realise I should perhaps have excluded the Videos folder as well!

    I tried the Clonezilla live CD but got a slight problem with getting to the right drive for storing the backup, so will try again later (I am just doing all of this in preparation for an upgrade, in case anything goes badly wrong, so I can get back to square 1).

    I suppose I can use a tarball to back up my ******* drive as well (sadly I have to use that other operating system for some applications that do not have Linux alternatives)?
    Last edited by BarryM; January 7th, 2010 at 10:37 AM. Reason: Spelling error
    Barry
    A near novice where Ubuntu is concerned!
    Currently using 22.04

  6. #996
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Beans
    18

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    I'm a new convert running Karmic, and I love it. A trial run of Heliode's backup-and-restore method worked fine for me. However, I have a new desktop on the way and, although I've searched this and other threads, I can't find direct answers to the following:

    1. Is a disk image or a simple automatic sbackup the best way to backup the old HD and restore to the new? I had a devil of a time getting the settings right for a Linksys router and a Canon printer. I still don't know what I did right to get them to work, and I'm a bit paranoid about losing the settings to those devices in particular.

    2. The old box is 2002 vintage and runs a 32-bit OS. The new one is 64-bit. Will the drive-image/sbackup-restore method transfer successfully to the new one? Will the sbackup automatic version? Should I install 64-bit Karmic first, then transplant the old files?

    3. The new machine will have a new graphic card and other internal hardware. If I restore the disk image will that cause something to implode?

    Many thanks in advance for any replies. And please use small words in any responses: I'm obviously very new to this and on the wrong side of 65 to boot.

  7. #997
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Hyderabad, India
    Beans
    63
    Distro
    Ubuntu

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    What if the UIDs of the swap areas are different?

  8. #998
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Uijeongbu, South Korea
    Beans
    20
    Distro
    Ubuntu 6.06

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    It should be noted that when you restore from your backup, your backup file will ALSO be deleted if it is on the hard drive.

  9. #999
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Beans
    75

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    Hi,

    I'm getting this error with the backup command of the post #1.

    Code:
    /sbin/halt
    tar: /: file changed as we read it
    tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
    $
    I remember the command:

    Code:
    tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /
    Any idea?

    Javi

  10. #1000
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Beans
    2

    Re: Howto: Backup and restore your system!

    Hi all,

    Here is a shell I have put together from this post. I am not a guru on shell scripts this was put together with the help of google search .
    Feel free to comment and/or change it.
    I saved it as backupAndRestore.sh and you can run it as follows
    sudo ./backupAndRestore.sh
    enjoy

    Code:
    #!/bin/bash
    S1='b'
    S2='y'
    echo "Please enter b for backup or r for restore:"
    read action
    
    if [ $action = $S1 ]; then 
        
        echo "These Directories will be excluded:"
        echo -e "\033[1m\033[32m /proc /lost+found */backup.tgz /mnt /sys /dev"
        echo -e "\033[0m"
        echo "To chance these values edit this shell"
        echo "continue (y/n):"
            
        read action
        if [ $action = $S2 ]; then 
            echo "Backing up PC ~ timestamp " ;date
            tar cpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=*/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys  /
        fi
    else
        echo -e "\033[1m\033[31mWARNING: this will overwrite every single file on your partition with the one in the archive!"    
        echo -e "\033[0m"    
        echo "Please enter name and location of the archive to restore:"        
        read fileName
        echo "You are about to restore $fileName do you want to continue?(y/n)"
        read action
        echo -e "\033[1m\033[47mJust sit back and watch the fireworks.This might take a while. When it is done, you have a fully restored Ubuntu system!"
        sleep 5
        echo "start"
        if [ $action = $S2 ]; then 
            tar xvpfz $fileName -C /
            echo "Creating excluded directories"    
            #Just to make sure that all excluded directories are re-created
            mkdir /proc
            mkdir /lost+found
            mkdir /mnt
            mkdir /sys
            
        fi    
    fi
    echo -e "\033[0m"

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