Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[nicholaspaul]

I have a question(S) - is there a way to do this over a network? What if I ssh to the machine to be backed up?

More questions: Does burning the resulting tar to a disc make it bootable?What I want is a custom made install disc of my own configuration.

Thanks

[jonrkc]

Just burning a backup to a disc won't make it bootable, even if it seems to include all the directories. But all the front-ends for burning discs that I've used provide a way to make a disc bootable. They will pretty well guide you through the few steps needed. If you want the disc bootable, it's a good idea to burn it at a low speed to make sure you don't get any errors at all on it.

[nicholaspaul]

Oh ok - thanks John. I have looked thru a few burning programs (Toast, K3b, GnomeBaker) and can't find a way to make a tar or the extracted version bootable. Am I really missing something here?

[jonrkc]

Oh ok - thanks John. I have looked thru a few burning programs (Toast, K3b, GnomeBaker) and can't find a way to make a tar or the extracted version bootable. Am I really missing something here?

Well, sorry to say both k3b and xcdroast have decided either not to work at all (xcdroast) or to malfunction (k3b) on my system, so I'm unable fully to explore this.

In k3b, assuming you can get it to work, after you start a "new cd data project" and specify the .tar file you want to put on the CD, you then go to "project" on the top menu and choose "edit boot images" and go from there.

In xcdroast, under the "create cd > master tracks" menu there's a tab called "boot options." Clicking on that provides the way to instruct xcdroast to make the disc bootable. Normally you would want to choose the "El Torito" method.


I was actually going to create a bootable CD this way before replying here, but since neither of my CD-writing programs want to work just now, I'm unable to.

Can somebody else with more expertise and more COOPERATIVE software help out here, please?

Sorry to be so unhelpful; if I can get things working again I'll experiment and meanwhile I hope somebody else can help you.

[nicholaspaul]

Actually you were very helpful ! Thanks!

While I have k3b working quite well (through no skill of my own, some things just happen... ) I did get an error while trying to make a bootable disc. I clicked on the file, selected Project> Edit Boot Image, clicked New and tried to burn. After adding the files, it anounced:

Size of boot image is 450228 sectors -> /usr/bin/mkisofs: Error - boot image '/tmp/kde-nicholas/k3bfs9D9a.tmp' has not an allowable size.

Fortunately it did this before making a coaster.
I get an error related to mkisofs when I try xcdroast too.. sounds like I should replace the user and try again.


If I had the files uncompressed on a CD , could I simply copy the files over in order to restore?

[foxiness]

i'm plane to delete all partition on my harddisk than use the instrcation as on "Howto: Backup and restore your system!" what i need after i create partition for "xp" than the reset for ubuntu ,to restore the xp and ubuntu backup in removable-drive when i'm work on live cd ?

plane :
1-backup to /media/backup -removable harddisk - tar cvpfz backup-full-ubuntu-5.04-2005-06-06.tgz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/media --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys
2-delete allpartition
3-create part for xp vfat
4-create swap than the reset for /
5-restore xp to firest partion
6.1-restore ubuntu to 3rd one
6.2-mkdir proc , lost+found ,media ,mnt ,sys
7-restore grub
8-reboot

5 & 6 i think i need help here

#tar xvpfj backup.tar.bz2 -C /

i guess this will not work with me ?

[foxiness]

i'm plane to delete all partition on my harddisk than use the instrcation as on "Howto: Backup and restore your system!" what i need after i create partition for "xp" than the reset for ubuntu ,to restore the xp and ubuntu backup in removable-drive when i'm work on live cd ?

plane :
1-backup to /media/backup -removable harddisk - tar cvpfz backup-full-ubuntu-5.04-2005-06-06.tgz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/media --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys
2-delete allpartition
3-create part for xp vfat
4-create swap than the reset for /
5-restore xp to firest partion
6.1-restore ubuntu to 3rd one
6.2-mkdir proc , lost+found ,media ,mnt ,sys
7-restore grub
8-reboot

5 & 6 i think i need help here

#tar xvpfj backup.tar.bz2 -C /

i guess this will not work with me ?

k my note :

1- after i do all above but i forget to make dir sys mnt media proc lost+found

after the sys reboot its start fine and its create all dir exp mnt and media

and import to create media and /medai/cdrom0

than all thing right but

waring : udevdb alraedy exit on the old /dev/!

that is all thanks

[szdavid]

Hello

i read all the seven pages ; a lot of discussions, really interesting but i am a real newbie so a few questions :
- does the howto on the first page work ? Is it the good one ?
- right now, i have two partitions : one for / and one for /home ;
how can i say during a restore "put /home in this partition and / to this one ?"

I think a good way in case of problem would be to install Ubuntu (like a new install) and after this, to restore my backup ; is it possible to restore / while i am using ubuntu or do I need to use a live cd ?

Thanks

[Heliode]

Hello

i read all the seven pages ; a lot of discussions, really interesting but i am a real newbie so a few questions :
- does the howto on the first page work ? Is it the good one ?
- right now, i have two partitions : one for / and one for /home ;
how can i say during a restore "put /home in this partition and / to this one ?"

I think a good way in case of problem would be to install Ubuntu (like a new install) and after this, to restore my backup ; is it possible to restore / while i am using ubuntu or do I need to use a live cd ?

Thanks

Ok, there's a lot of questions in there, I'll try to answer them one by one.

1: The howto on the first page is what I use and what works for me. I've used it to backup several systems and it worked every time for me
2: If you want to have a backup of /home, just cd to / and run the correct command. In your case probably something like this:

# cd /
# sudo tar cvpfz homebak.tgz /home

If you want to backup /, just cd to /home and run the regular backup command, but this time exclude /home since it is on a seperate partition. This would make the commands look something like this:

# cd /home
# tar cvpfz backup.tgz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home

If you want to restore just the backup of the homedir, you would need something like this:

# cd /
# tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /home

Be careful though: If you have a backup of / in your home-dir, it'll be overwritten when you restore your home-dir. (unless, of course, it is included in the archive but that wouldn't be very space-efficient )

The best would be to store the backup of /home on the / partition, and store the backup of the / partition on another machine or burn it to DVD or whatever.

As far as I know, it is possible to restore / on a running system. I've never tried it before but since it is also possible to erase everything in / on a running system, I figure why not! I'm gonna need some confermation here though.
Of course you could always just use a live-cd. Usually when you have to restore /, you don't have an option anyway!

Hope this helps!

[szdavid]

Ok, there's a lot of questions in there, I'll try to answer them one by one.

1: The howto on the first page is what I use and what works for me. I've used it to backup several systems and it worked every time for me
2: If you want to have a backup of /home, just cd to / and run the correct command. In your case probably something like this:

# cd /
# sudo tar cvpfz homebak.tgz /home

If you want to backup /, just cd to /home and run the regular backup command, but this time exclude /home since it is on a seperate partition. This would make the commands look something like this:

# cd /home
# tar cvpfz backup.tgz / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home

If you want to restore just the backup of the homedir, you would need something like this:

# cd /
# tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /home

Be careful though: If you have a backup of / in your home-dir, it'll be overwritten when you restore your home-dir. (unless, of course, it is included in the archive but that wouldn't be very space-efficient )

The best would be to store the backup of /home on the / partition, and store the backup of the / partition on another machine or burn it to DVD or whatever.

As far as I know, it is possible to restore / on a running system. I've never tried it before but since it is also possible to erase everything in / on a running system, I figure why not! I'm gonna need some confermation here though.
Of course you could always just use a live-cd. Usually when you have to restore /, you don't have an option anyway!

Hope this helps!

Thanks a lot for these answers