Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[ephman]

I know this is not recommended, but have you tried backing up as root?

hold on i'm confused... i actually do back everything up as root, and then restore as root. am i missing something? (so glad i was able to pull my home directory out of the archive... whew i'm alive)

thanks,
ephman

[tech9]

hold on i'm confused... i actually do back everything up as root, and then restore as root. am i missing something? (so glad i was able to pull my home directory out of the archive... whew i'm alive)

thanks,
ephman

you can back everything up as user by using root privilege sudo -i

[thelatinist]

Thanks for the how-to. Now I have another question, though:

I am trying to create a script to run in cron which will automate weekly backups using this method, name them using the date in the filenames, and delete any backup files older than 30 days. This is what I have:

#!/bin/sh

tar cvpzf /path/to/backup-$(date +"%b-%d-%y").tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home /

find /path/to/backup/*.tgz -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;

exit

I'm new to shell scripting. If I schedule this in crontab as root, will it do what I'm expecting it to?

[myharshdesigner]

thanks dear

[jonasl]

How do i create the backup.tgz file directly on another hard drive that i have mounted?

[mdpalow]

How do i create the backup.tgz file directly on another hard drive that i have mounted?

cd to the location you want the back-up file to be placed and then run your tar command.

example:

cd /media/some_disk_name

then run your tar command

[decideci]

:'(
i used the method described in the first posting to save my ubuntu 7.10 settings and all before start fiddling with the ATI drivers from hell... i was not able to get either the binary drivers NOR the open source version to work correctly with my radeon 9600. no direct rendering. slowslow desktop. bla...

using the backup worked the first couple of times. i got my system back to working normal and all.
then something went horribly wrong and even after applying the backup the desktop was slow, unresponsive and simply not usable. so i figured i could just do a fresh install and load the backup over that....

worked fine until i rebooted the system after applying the backup... stops booting with a warning like "bla bla drive with UUID bla bla doesnt exist" and ends at a cryptic emergency command line. i did not change drives. used the same partitions as the previous install.... :'((

is there anything i can do to get my backup working again? *sob sob*

[Nightwalker07]

When restoring your system from your backup (using this method) I recommend that you do a fresh reinstall of the OS and then extract the backup.

Regards UUID stuff, see this post:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...95#post3860695

Did you not exclude the /boot and fstab ?

[decideci]

thanks for the reply! i excluded /proc /mnt /sys and /media (all my windows partitions are mounted there so no need to include them in the ubuntu backup)

i did a fresh install from the live CD.... i figured that maybe i have to remove the /dev/ directory from the backup archive? i am no linux pro. but i am pretty used to work with computers and figuring stuff out. but that is a bit over my head. hehe... (just like the fact that activating the restricted binary drivers from ATI renders my gnome unusable instantly .... even though my card is in the compatible list)

the exact message that comes up while booting ubuntu (grub is working. ubuntu progress bar is starting, but standing still. switching to a different console shows the message):

check root=bootarg cat /proc/cmdline
or missing modules, devices: cat /proc/modules ls /dev
Alert! /dev/disk/by-uuid/75b.............




probably the best idea would be to just take the time and just rebuild my system from scratch. but then i would like to have a backup option that really works the way it should be before i try to fiddle with those pesky ati drivers again...

[Nightwalker07]

Im pretty sure the problem is you didn't exclude your /boot which will store the UUID of your drive/partition, this is different with each install I think. Im new to all this myself!

When you take make your tar backup you need to exclude the /boot and all its information, because some of it unique, with it excluded you can do a fresh reinstall, extract the backup and then it will work. Im pretty sure thats the deal, anyone else got advice?