Backup the system

[phazeman]

Can anyone tell me how can i backup the system of mine ? Mandrake 8.1. Is there any Ghost like programs for linux ?

Thanks in advance.

[bdg1983]

Norton Ghost or Powerquests DriveImage.

Also search freshmeat.net for opensource alternatives.

[phazeman]

10x Logon Name Gone , but i know (and i might mistake) that GHost isn't work for linux, is it true ?

[teeitup]

Ghost 2001 and newer will work just fine.

I use 2001 with no problems at all.

Older versions (5.1c) will work also.
The only catch is that it won't compress.
If you have a 10MB disk you need a 10MB disk to ghost to. It won't matter how much space you've used, it's a bit by bit image. All white space gets put into the ghost archive file.

Good Luck,

[bdg1983]

DriveImage works and also compresses though currently it doesn't have support for ReiserFS. I used to use DI until I switched to ReiserFS.

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

[Nalle]

I for my part never make an image of the whole disk.

I create packages of what I install from source, keep all my installed apps that is not on the distro-cd in /usr/src and keep my path as clean as possible. I also save the tagfile from the setup-script.

Using Slackware I us an app called 'checkinstall' in stead of 'make install' when compiling a package. Checkinstall creates Slackware packages (can also create RPM's) while installing, so I can remove the app with my package manager, and next install requires no compiling - I just install the package that 'checkinstall' created. Saves me a lot of time when reinstalling, and have the advantage over ghost that you can choose not to install some packages you no longer need.

If I for some reason need to reinstall the whole machine, I've backed up (by making a tar.gz) /etc, /home, /var/spool, /root, /var/www and /usr/src exclusive /usr/src/linux.

Having that backed up, I only install from scratch with the tragfile I've crated to choose packages, untar the tar.gz-files in their appropriate places, run lilo and reboot the system. Now my machine is as it was before the mishap. It all takes about an hour, and leavs you with a system that is just as good as a ghost would have made it.

At the same time, I set of some time to examine the tagfile so that the knowlege I've accumulated since last install also makes my next install better than the last. After that, I create a new tagfile.

If your kernel has been updated, you can also save out a tagfile for recompiling that, leaving you with only the actual compile time when restoring your "new" kernel.

</nalle>