Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[stldirty]

i got almost all the way to the end when i got this error

tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

it stopped on /usr/share/foo2oak/icm/

what can be the problem?

[scorp123]

what can be the problem?

Most likely no problem at all, you just reached the end of your filesystem and there is nothing left to pack or to compress.

If you are not sure:

tar tzvf nameOfArchive.tar.gz | more

... and then compare the names of the files you get with what's on the harddisk, especially take a good look at the file lengths:

ls -alR /path/to/dir | more

e.g. you could do a "tar tzvf" on your archive and then do a comparison with what's in your /usr folder:

ls -alR /usr | more

My guess is that the file you mentioned is just the very last one and there is nothing left to be packed, hence "tar" exits.

[stldirty]

Most likely no problem at all, you just reached the end of your filesystem and there is nothing left to pack or to compress.

If you are not sure:

tar tzvf nameOfArchive.tar.gz | more

... and then compare the names of the files you get with what's on the harddisk, especially take a good look at the file lengths:

ls -alR /path/to/dir | more

e.g. you could do a "tar tzvf" on your archive and then do a comparison with what's in your /usr folder:

ls -alR /usr | more

My guess is that the file you mentioned is just the very last one and there is nothing left to be packed, hence "tar" exits.

i have a lot of stuff in that tar. tens of thousands of files. is there a better way to do it than to scroll line by line looking at each file?

EDIT: nvm i figured out that it actually was the whole thing. thanks man.

[sofasurfer]

I backed up the system and it worked fine. My question is this, Why is there a copy at /backup.tgz and also at /home/daryl/Documents/backup.tgz?

I then removed the one in documents by right clicking and choosing 'move to trash'. The one at /backup.tgz was removed by "rm -R /backup.tgz. Hopefully this won't cause me any problems.

[drewster1829]

The original HowTo needs to be updated for newer systems using UUIDs instead of device names in /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab.

(That is if you're restoring to a different system, or you managed to bork your partitions, I think. I'm not sure how UUIDs work, but after overwriting my partitions, the UUIDs for the new partitions changed, even though it was the same hard drive and same system.)

The key is to do:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and uncomment (remove the #) from the /dev/hdXX lines, add a # to the UUID lines, and cut and past everything after the end of the UUID (starting with mount point / something). In other words, start with this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
#/dev/sda1
UUID=0d715e99-8762-4d17-9a23-fd433dbcfd8e /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
#/dev/sda5
UUID=bffbc922-af74-4e3c-b7c2-3b6be6d7f343 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0       0

Change it to this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/sda1	/ ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
#UUID=0d715e99-8762-4d17-9a23-fd433dbcfd8e
/dev/sda5 	none            swap    sw              0       0
#UUID=bffbc922-af74-4e3c-b7c2-3b6be6d7f343
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0       0

For the /boot/grub/menu.lst (this is required to boot! If you system will not boot, pop in a LiveCD and mount your systems hard drive, then open up sudo gedit (or w/e text editing program you like) and edit this file), change this section (at the bottom):

title		Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=0d715e99-8762-4d17-9a23-fd433dbcfd8e ro splash quiet
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

To this:

title		Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash
#UUID=0d715e99-8762-4d17-9a23-fd433dbcfd8e
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

Where /dev/sda1 is whatever your boot hard drive is. NOTE: The above examples are from my system. DO NOT copy and paste from this post, but from your own files. Makes backups if you're not sure what you're doing. The parameters might be different for your setup, and I was only providing an example of what needs to be done.

This really should be added to the original HowTo, as it's a necessity on any Ubuntu system using UUIDs. Otherwise, there is a good chance that your restored system will refuse to boot.

[santius]

Thank you very much! Its really usefull information for me, I will do it so next time I have problems I will try this.
I have a question, wich files in my system you recomend me to have backuped in case something goes wrong, for example, I have my Xorg.conf backuped, but, do you recomend something else to have backuped? Yesterday for example, my sound card stoped working, and I had to reinstall all sound related drivers...

Thanks!

[sjude]

I want to restore from my laptop to my desktop partition.

On my laptop I installed ubuntu within windows (c:\ubuntu directory) and on my desktop can I restore it to a Physical Linux partition. After restoring I get Grub error. I followed the procedure to restore Grub in both the installation method and the Live CD method from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...13&postcount=6 but the command install-grub is not found.

[weetfield]

I'm a complete beginner on Linux, looking for a bit of sanity after years over the M$ barrel. I wasn't going to get too deep into Kubuntu 8.04 Lts without finding some kind of 'System Restore' method to get out of my ongoing mistakes.

This thread has been very good for me and I have read a fair amount after the search for a system restore etc. turned up page 50. Thank you all. A couple of my own beginners comments that might help others in the same boat:-

I tried using both the live Kubuntu 8.04 cd and SystemRescueCd from the partimage stable (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page), using both the partimage system and tar.tgz

A lot of my early attempts failed because I was trying to save to an external USB drive. This always seemed to save OK but nearly always failed to restore. I don't know whether this is just my hardware or a system bug. There is an advantage in using the partimage system in that you can do a trial restore without overwriting your existing files. Both work fine on any other internal drive (inc NTFS, mount -tntfs-3g )

I only worked on the Kubuntu partition itself, now about 3 GiB, all my personal data (I guess /home) is on a completely separate drive.

One problem noted in an earlier post. Continuous cycling of the login page. I got this after restoring a tgz file. Nothing actually wrong with the file or the restore itself though. After the restore I had exited without unmounting the partitions. Kubuntu reported an improper shut-down during start-up and "fixed" it. It then booted OK to the login page but looped repeatedly. The same tgz file restored OK later if both the partitions were unmounted before exiting.

Last little point. rm -r /mnt/installation/* used to clear the system partition for restore asked me to confirm every file. -rf worked a lot faster.

Thanks again

weetfield

[BLTicklemonster]

On the 59th page, I still see stuff that would just blow my mind, lol.

I so want to be able to do this, but just don't have confidence in it after reading this thread off and on since it's inception.

I know, I know, other people do it all the time without any problems.

[weetfield]

I know, I know, other people do it all the time

To some extent I guess this is the ONLY way to do it.

Like any emergency procedure, you can only rely on it if you:- i) know how to use it, and ii) have proved that it works.

My personal data is separate from the OS, backed up and (proven) bombproof. All I am risking at the moment is a fresh install of kubuntu with one simple data mount, say one hour max from the live CD. I've got to admit that I have done this many times over the last week. Boring but with no real angst involved.

In six months time it might be very different, with several complicated applications installed, all configured and linked to the data files. It's about then that many people might start to think about backup, but it's a bad time to learn about the possible complications of restore.

At least after a week's work I'm pretty certain that, if I foul up the OS in future, I can just re-format the system partition and put a good earlier version back again. It's just one way of doing things. One colleague seems to do all his development work in multiple installations then plays with grub.

GRUB, now that really is frightening!

weetfield