Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[donnguna]

Yup,... why we've to pay while so many good people on the net who to share

[Nightwalker07]

it was great to read this superb guide to backing-up/restoring. The fact that linux allows your to access or delete any file (even if in use) was very impressive. As with any new backup method I come across, im naturally worried about its integrity, after-all if something does fail you the last thing you want is to turn to your backup and not have it work, so I have backed-up using your method and im interested in testing the restore out just to verify it works ok.

I have spent a week struggling with getting a MythTV-box working, with hardware problems etc, but now I've got it all working and stable! Worked hard to get it to that point so I want a reliable backup method to use so I can revert back to this working point. I have made the backup.tgz and would like to test it. What I would like to ask is it hardware-specific do you think? how would it deal with new hardware? ie. my MythTV-box is a desktop, and im wondering if I could test restoring the backup on a laptop, would it matter?

Also; regards: "You can even remove every single file of a Linux system while it is running with one command." - this intrigued me!.. is this really true? how would that work if you were in a desktop environment? Surely thats not possible? (I would love to be proved wrong!) lol. I tried this yesterday on a old ubuntu(7.04)-laptop, as root I sat at the root of the filesystem and executed my best guess at removing all files:

rm -rf *

Starting ticking away and removing all the files on the system, but had a ton of access issues due to 'files in use' which was exactly what I thought wasnt supposed to happen!? Thats why I doubted the reliability of this info, just wondered if you could clear up a few things with me.

Thank you for your time and help, much appreciated.

[Nightwalker07]

Anyway, I've had a test-laptop to test this back & restore technique on. Dealing with ubuntu 7.04 I have followed the method precisely. I have tried it three times, the first time it seemed to have work and the last two times didnt work, they both produced the same result; a non booting system. It gets to the ubuntu OS loading screen loads about 1% of the orange bar and freezes, if I leave it for a while it then shows a screen saying:

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-3ubuntu3) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
(initramfs)

Why did the method work once? and why am I now getting these results that aren't working? As far as I can tell I have done a controlled textbook test of this backup/restore method. Any help greatly appreciated.

[shane2peru]

I don't remember the exact error message, but I believe this is the same error that I have seen many times. The problem is that Grub is not correct, or better stated your menu.lst is not correct, or to be more precise, your system changed the UUID numbers and can no longer locate the partition to boot from. When grub comes up, select the one you want to boot, and hit the 'e' key, this will allow you to temporarily edit that line for booting purposes. I'm assuming that you know what your hdd numbers are and the one that you are booting from. Replace the UUID=xkdaoi39829ajkd90 or whatever that very large group of alphanumeric string is with /dev/sda1 or /dev/hda1 or whatever your hdd partition that you want to boot into should be and it should boot right up. Once inside you need to fix your grub menu.lst again as that only allows you to boot into the system. This is the reason I don't use this backup method any longer. It is not reliable.

Shane

[Nightwalker07]

Thanks for your reply. I understand it could mess up GRUB a litte, I see what you mean, but its a test-laptop and I only have 1 HDD and no other hardware changes took place during the tests, so should this still have effected grub? Seeing as it didnt work for me im guessing the answer is going to be yes. Weird how it worked once and not the two other times.

There's only one thing I ask of a backup method and thats reliability! So do you think if you were willing to manually fix the grub boot-loader each time this would be a reliable method? Or is this method just worthless altogether?

[tech9]

=D>

Anyway, I've had a test-laptop to test this back & restore technique on. Dealing with ubuntu 7.04 I have followed the method precisely. I have tried it three times, the first time it seemed to have work and the last two times didnt work, they both produced the same result; a non booting system. It gets to the ubuntu OS loading screen loads about 1% of the orange bar and freezes, if I leave it for a while it then shows a screen saying:

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-3ubuntu3) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
(initramfs)

Why did the method work once? and why am I now getting these results that aren't working? As far as I can tell I have done a controlled textbook test of this backup/restore method. Any help greatly appreciated.

I had the exact same problem make sure you exclude the /boot directory and you won't get this error anymore after restoring

[tech9]

Thanks for your reply. I understand it could mess up GRUB a litte, I see what you mean, but its a test-laptop and I only have 1 HDD and no other hardware changes took place during the tests, so should this still have effected grub? Seeing as it didnt work for me im guessing the answer is going to be yes. Weird how it worked once and not the two other times.

There's only one thing I ask of a backup method and thats reliability! So do you think if you were willing to manually fix the grub boot-loader each time this would be a reliable method? Or is this method just worthless altogether?

See this link for more info...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=564836

[Nightwalker07]

=D>

I had the exact same problem make sure you exclude the /boot directory and you won't get this error anymore after restoring

ooo, that sounds superb! Hope it works, I'll give it a go tomorrow, Thanks!

[shane2peru]

See this link for more info...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=564836

THANK YOU FOR MAKING A NEW THREAD!!! This thread has gotten way to long, and I don't think the original poster is even active. By the way, that is a very good tip, and I will include it in my new backup script that I use. Thanks!

ooo, that sounds superb! Hope it works, I'll give it a go tomorrow, Thanks!

Let us know how it goes for you!!! We are waiting to hear!

Shane

[indosupremacy]

bro...i have done exactly like what this tread said about back up...but,while i'm trying to restore it,it seem that i have trouble ....
after i try to make mkdir other directory i excluded etc: /proc ..., /lost+found...and other directory that i have excluded .it said...the directory u want is already exist...
any help...?
thanks broooo