disk backup image

[-sureshot-]

I know this has likely been discussed before, but here we go again.

I just finished setting up a beautiful, perfectly working debian sid install. E
verything is configured the way i like it. Now i know myself, and i know that b
efore long, i'm going to do something stupid and break the whole thing. So my q
uestion is this, what's the best way to make a cd image of the entire install?
It's under 300meg, so fitting it on a cd won't be a problem.

should i just:


mkisofs -r -o <name> / ?

Will this get the whole system? (everything is on a single partition...i know, i know).

Or should a tar file be created first, and then burned? Or is there an even better way?

Now assuming that a cd image has been created, would installing then be a matter of simply partitioning and formatting a disk, mounting the cdrom, and dd'ing the contents onto the disk?

any and all help would be appreciated, thanks.

[godot]

check out partimage
http://www.partimage.org/

[slacker_x]

I used to not care about partitioning, but recently I changed my stance on that. I downloaded some CVS drivers for my Aureal soundcard in an attempt to get sound working in Unreal Tournament. I installed the drivers. Everything seemed fine. When I came back later that day I had 4 gigs of logs and my system totally bombed because it had no HD space left. I rebooted, deleted the logs and removed the drivers. Everything is fine now, but the next time I install, I am going to partition.