Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[kevinfitch83]

I have a dual-boot (Ubuntu and Windows XP) could I use this same method to back-up my copy of windows?

If so what dirs would a need to include?

[tech9]

for u my brooooo
now it actually work....
my fault on the last tried ist that i wasn't umount /media/sdax....
after i umount it...there's no problem at all....

offcourse theres trouble after kernel upgrade...but this thing make me back healthy again..
this thing is the simplest thing to back up....

Glad to hear you got it working

[tech9]

Why do you --exclude=/etc/fstab ?
Is fstab generated automatically, I didn't think so.. ?

yes... it is and if the UUID do not match up, then you will have problems booting that partition

[bluepowder7]

ha! this looks like the solution i should have used before mistakenly blowing away my work files from the /home partition. i never ever made backups, at least not since the days i had an external tape drive (which held a whopping 100megs i think).

time to start a "back up your crap" routine, i guess, and this one looks very well documented! thanks!!!

[Nightwalker07]

To some extent you were lucky. If you had installed gcc instead of KTron in your test, then you would have found that the "--exclude /sys" option in the backup script leads to the exclusion of such things as /usr/included/sys and everything else with "/sys" somewhere in the path. After your restore, gcc would have been broken because of missing header files. I posted earlier about this.

You need to add the --anchored option to tar to avoid this behavior.

(But even then, I've been bitten so many times by the unexpected behavior of tar's various options, that I've stopped using it for my backups.)

This comment is the only thing thats got me worried about this backup method. I mean with a backup method the sole thing you need to know is that its integrity is good, can you shed any more light on what might be kept under /sys and what it might break? Fair enough I have tested this technique on fairly fresh installations, but im worried about the likes of my well-matured MythTV box, I need to know that the backups im doing of that are working if the day ever comes when I need to rely on them.

Is the '-anchored option' regards the tar following links in subdir's under sys? any info would be appreciated.

[tech9]

This comment is the only thing thats got me worried about this backup method. I mean with a backup method the sole thing you need to know is that its integrity is good, can you shed any more light on what might be kept under /sys and what it might break? Fair enough I have tested this technique on fairly fresh installations, but im worried about the likes of my well-matured MythTV box, I need to know that the backups im doing of that are working if the day ever comes when I need to rely on them.

Is the '-anchored option' regards the tar following links in subdir's under sys? any info would be appreciated.

Hi Nightwalker07,

You could try installing virtual box and install a test VM, then restore from there and see if it works.

[Nightwalker07]

Hi Nightwalker07,

You could try installing virtual box and install a test VM, then restore from there and see if it works.

Funny you mention that I was using Gusty under a VMware Server on XP and the thought crossed my mind, but I didnt want to do it under those conditions because gusty dosent run well under vmware atm, but I will get a virtualbox going on my ubuntu-laptop, I know that runs smoother! I'll mature the VM and fill it with plenty of crap! Thanks again.

[tech9]

Funny you mention that I was using Gusty under a VMware Server on XP and the thought crossed my mind, but I didnt want to do it under those conditions because gusty dosent run well under vmware atm, but I will get a virtualbox going on my ubuntu-laptop, I know that runs smoother! I'll mature the VM and fill it with plenty of crap! Thanks again.

NP
Take Care

[mannheim]

This comment is the only thing thats got me worried about this backup method. I mean with a backup method the sole thing you need to know is that its integrity is good, can you shed any more light on what might be kept under /sys and what it might break? Fair enough I have tested this technique on fairly fresh installations, but im worried about the likes of my well-matured MythTV box, I need to know that the backups im doing of that are working if the day ever comes when I need to rely on them.

Is the '-anchored option' regards the tar following links in subdir's under sys? any info would be appreciated.

Well I take back some of what I wrote! Here, however, is what "man tar" says:

--anchored
              force exclusion patterns to match initial subsequences
--no-anchored
              allow exclusion patterns to match any substring (the default)

I interpret this to mean that "--exclude=/sys" will by default exclude anything whose path contains the string "/sys", such as "/usr/include/sys/foo", unless you supply the --anchored option. I just test this hypothesis, and it is wrong. If you do "--exclude=sys" then you will indeed exclude things like "/usr/include/sys/foo", but it seems "--exclude=/sys" (with the leading forward slash) is treated differently.

So my earlier post was wrong. I do stand by my statement that the options and documentation for tar are so hairy that it is almost impossible to know what it will do, without just testing or reading the source.

[Nightwalker07]

Well it was worth bringing up & thinking about, thanks for testing it out and letting us know. Im just about to get a ubuntu-7.10 installation going in VirtualBox, im gona try mature the installation with plenty of crap and test this backup method on that and see if it works or breaks stuff.