how do i backup all my data and restore?

[Emiliano Brunetti]

After testing around with parted and qtparted, i am still without a
solution so i am thinking of installing again FC1.

Here it goes:

- i'd like to save all data in /home and /etc and be able to later
restore everything;

I tried once to do a backup and restore of /home only, but i anyway lost
some valuable stuff (old emails that never got correcly restored,
personal information within web browser and so on). I wish there was a
way to do this so that i don't loose all the time i spent configuring my
system. ;)

Any hint?

Resizing and moving partitions is not an option, since neither qtparted
nor parted seem to work on my system. None of them deal with ext3 fs and
both of them give strange errors with ext2 fs.

Thanks

E.

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

From: "Emiliano Brunetti"
> After testing around with parted and qtparted, i am still without a
> solution so i am thinking of installing again FC1.
>
> Here it goes:
> i'd like to save all data in /home and /etc and be able to later
>
> restore everything;

Yep, check out Mondo, it's sweet!

http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/index.html

[David L Norris]

On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 08:42, Emiliano Brunetti wrote:
> I tried once to do a backup and restore of /home only, but i anyway lost
> some valuable stuff (old emails that never got correcly restored,
> personal information within web browser and so on). I wish there was a
> way to do this so that i don't loose all the time i spent configuring my
> system. ;)

cp has an archive option:
  cp -a /home /somewhere

I keep nightly backups of /etc using tar in a cron job:
  tar --create --ignore-failed-read --owner=root --group=root --gzip
--file=/home/backup/critical-${HOSTNAME}.tgz --backup=numbered /etc
> Any hint?

In the future, place /home on its own partition.  Then you don't have to
backup anything to install a new/updated system.  Just make sure you
don't format it during the install process.

I mount /home on a software RAID array made from two 80 GB disks.  Then
I don't have to worry as much about hardware failures.

[Emiliano Brunetti]

On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 15:39, David L Norris wrote:
> > I tried once to do a backup and restore of /home only, but i anyway lost
> > some valuable stuff (old emails that never got correcly restored,
> > personal information within web browser and so on). I wish there was a
> > way to do this so that i don't loose all the time i spent configuring my
> > system. ;)
>
> cp has an archive option:
>   cp -a /home /somewhere
>
> I keep nightly backups of /etc using tar in a cron job:
>   tar --create --ignore-failed-read --owner=root --group=root --gzip
> --file=/home/backup/critical-${HOSTNAME}.tgz --backup=numbered /etc

I'll try, thanks. Did you ever try a restore too? Did it work? I tried
once with 'cp -a' but when i tried to restore, many of local
configuration were unusable and i had to personalize again everything.
;( Maybe i did something wrong...
> > Any hint?
>
> In the future, place /home on its own partition.  Then you don't have to
> backup anything to install a new/updated system.  Just make sure you
> don't format it during the install process.

Well, it is on a specific partition. When i installed FC1, it was just
for a test. Now i want to stay with it, so i need some 'fine tuning',
namely /home is too small and i need to resize. Well, there was no way.
Neither parted or qtparted worked with ext3, Pmagic is not a option and
so i thought about reinstalling.

Thanks a lot

E.

[David L Norris]

On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 09:56, Emiliano Brunetti wrote:
> I'll try, thanks. Did you ever try a restore too? Did it work? I tried
> once with 'cp -a' but when i tried to restore, many of local
> configuration were unusable and i had to personalize again everything.
> ;( Maybe i did something wrong...

I use "cp -a" to do nightly backups of several GB from one machine to
another via NFS.  It works very well.  The backup machine is mirrored in
case of a hardware failure on the main machine.

The main problem is that cp doesn't offer any assurance that the files
were copied correctly.  If there are disk errors (bad sectors, etc) it
is possible to end up with corrupted files.  I've had this happen about
10 times in the past 5 years.  It was always caused by bad disks or poor
connections.  I always try to verify the copy before I destroy the
original.  That may be difficult in your case.

As someone else suggested Mondo may be better.  Mondo appears to also
backup to CD-ROM or Tape.  That might be best if you don't have much
data to backup.  (It would be a problem in my case since I have hundreds
of GB in /home...)
> Well, it is on a specific partition. When i installed FC1, it was just
> for a test. Now i want to stay with it, so i need some 'fine tuning',
> namely /home is too small and i need to resize. Well, there was no way.
> Neither parted or qtparted worked with ext3, Pmagic is not a option and
> so i thought about reinstalling.

I've had that problem a few times...  Now I keep /home on separate disks
so I can maintain it independent of the system partitions/disks.  To
upgrade I install a new disk and use "cp -a" to copy from the old disk
to the new disk.  Then I can remount the new disk to /home.

I was experimenting with LVM a few days ago.  I think my next disk
upgrade is going to use LVM volumes on software RAID-1 devices.  e2fsadm
appears to work great to shrink and grow ext3 partitions on LVM volumes.

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 09:52 1/12/2004, you wrote:
> I use "cp -a" [...] doesn't offer any assurance that the files
> were copied correctly.  If there are disk errors (bad sectors, etc) it
> is possible to end up with corrupted files.  I've had this happen about
> 10 times in the past 5 years.  It was always caused by bad disks or poor
> connections.  I always try to verify the copy before I destroy the
> original.  That may be difficult in your case.

So instead, use "rsync -av" or even check out the checksumming options for 
rsync. Very powerful, good mojo.

[David Jackson]

> At 09:52 1/12/2004, you wrote:
> > I use "cp -a" [...] doesn't offer any assurance that the files
> > were copied correctly.  If there are disk errors (bad sectors, etc) it
> > is possible to end up with corrupted files.  I've had this happen about
> > 10 times in the past 5 years.  It was always caused by bad disks or poor
> > connections.  I always try to verify the copy before I destroy the
> > original.  That may be difficult in your case.
>
> So instead, use "rsync -av" or even check out the checksumming options for
> rsync. Very powerful, good mojo.

You might also want to take a look at the "Linux Crash HOWTO":
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-Crash-HOWTO/index.html
> --
> Rodolfo J. Paiz
> [e-mail]
> http://www.simpaticus.com
>
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