owlcroft
January 3rd, 2011, 01:30 AM
The problem is not a lack of information, it is a waterfall of overlapping and often contradictory information.
Here is what I have and what I want to do:
I have a fresh Maverick install--and nothing else on the hard drive--which has been customized and augmented in various ways. The install has a dedicated /boot partition, and that is where GRUB2 was installed.
At present, I back up my home directory to (among other places) a USB stick. What I want to do as well (or instead) is back up my entire system to a bootable USB stick. Moreover, I want to be able to keep that backup in sync with my existing system, updating on a frequent basis. In effect, if my entire hard drive were destroyed, I would like to be able to completely restore from the USB stick.
Now it seems to my doubtless ignorant mind that all that is needed is for the stick to get a simple MBR on it, after which I could just use rsync to keep the entire rest up to date (omitting, if one wants, things like the /tmp directory). Is that over-simplistic? And in any event, how would I most easily go about first getting the bare MBR onto the stick? Would a simple use of mbr-install do the trick?
I suppose the long way round would be to install from the Live CD to the stick, using manual format and setting partitions analogous to those on the main hard drive, then use rcync, but that seems tedious.
My thanks for any help anyone can give here.
Here is what I have and what I want to do:
I have a fresh Maverick install--and nothing else on the hard drive--which has been customized and augmented in various ways. The install has a dedicated /boot partition, and that is where GRUB2 was installed.
At present, I back up my home directory to (among other places) a USB stick. What I want to do as well (or instead) is back up my entire system to a bootable USB stick. Moreover, I want to be able to keep that backup in sync with my existing system, updating on a frequent basis. In effect, if my entire hard drive were destroyed, I would like to be able to completely restore from the USB stick.
Now it seems to my doubtless ignorant mind that all that is needed is for the stick to get a simple MBR on it, after which I could just use rsync to keep the entire rest up to date (omitting, if one wants, things like the /tmp directory). Is that over-simplistic? And in any event, how would I most easily go about first getting the bare MBR onto the stick? Would a simple use of mbr-install do the trick?
I suppose the long way round would be to install from the Live CD to the stick, using manual format and setting partitions analogous to those on the main hard drive, then use rcync, but that seems tedious.
My thanks for any help anyone can give here.