ftzsee
Premium
join:2001-11-22
clubs: | reply to subcultured
Re: How to do backups in Linux...
You'll want to skip the /dev directory too right? |
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benyto
Premium
join:2000-07-09
Chico, CA | Yeah, you'll skip that, too. |
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benyto
Premium
join:2000-07-09
Chico, CA
| reply to bluesea1
Re: norton ghost in linux?
I figured I'd better toss in something useful to this conversation.
subcultured wrote up some pretty good stuff about using tar to create
an image of a partition. I'd like to add a little to what he had to say.
My
desktop has only two partitions on it, / and /boot. Let's say I want to
image them separately. Here's what I would do. First, I would create a
file called 'tar_ignore' in the root directory of whichever file system
I am currently going to image. In this file I will include a list of
directories I don't want to be included in the archive. Mine looks like
this for my / partition:
dev
proc
tmp
mnt
This
allows your command line to be quite a bit shorter, and also allows you
to change which directories you want/don't want without having to alter
the command line you use. This is helpful if you use a shell script to
create the archive. I will then create the archive with the following
command line:
# tar -cvplP -X tar_ignore -f /tmp/root.tar /
What are my switches doing?
•'c' is 'create'
•'v' is verbose (only use if you actually want to see what is going on. I don't use this one normally.)
•'p' maintains file permission information
•'l'
will only archive directories within the current filesystem (i.e., if
you are archiving /, it will automatically skip any directories which
are part of other file systems)
•'P' does not strip the leading backslashes on file names
•'X' specifies the file to read to get a list of files to leave out of the archive (in my case 'tar_ignore')
•'f' specifies the name of the file to create ('/tmp/root.tar' in this case)
The final backslash specifies what file I want to archive, which is / in this case.
This
creates a file called 'root.tar' in my /tmp directory. This file is an
image of my / file system, minus any directories I don't need archived.
I'd repeat the procedure for my /boot partition, but I don't need a
'tar_ignore' file there. There isn't anything I want to skip for that
partition. |
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benyto
Premium
join:2000-07-09
Chico, CA
|
In addition to my above post, I will copy and paste a PM I sent to
subcultured earlier. It may have some helpful information for other
people (I'll even leave my spelling mistakes in there for authenticity  ):
said by benyto:
Acutally,
you've taken it farther than I ever have. You've done a real nice write
up on how to do it. I'm guessing the stumbling block you're having is
skipping certain mounted file systems. A good solution to that would be
creating a shell script which first umounted any file system you didn't
want backed up, do the tar bit, and then remount the file systems.
That, of course, leaves those FSs unavailable during the back up
procedure, which may not be acceptable.
A better solution, in
the case that those file systems may be required during back up, is to
use the -X option instead of the --excludes. This lets you specify
files/directories in a text file to exclude. That way you can update
the file as needed, without having to actually edit your tar command
line. In that file simply specify the files/directories you did *not*
want to be backed up.
Also, for automated backups, you may want
to leave off the -v option. There is really no need vor verbosity if
nobody is going to be awake to view output. It will only slow the whole
thing down.
One last point: Where you have the -d option, I
*think* you want to -u option. The -d switch checks for differences
between the archive and the file systems. The -u switch updates the
archive with only the files that are new than those in the archive
itself.
Ok, more final notes
You are correct in telling people not to compress the archive. Only
backups that will be stored on a separate medium, like CD-ROM or DVD,
and stored for long-term archival purposes should be compressed. And
only then if space is tight. The problem with compressing archives is
that if the file gets corrupted, the whole thing is basically shot.
gzip can't recover well from corrupted archives. It may also be a good
idea to store the archive on a different partition than root. It would
be benificial to have a partition or HDD dedicated solely to the backup
archive. That way, in case of FS corruption or failure, the backup
should be safe.
|
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subcultured
Premium
join:2001-08-21
Jamaica Plain, MA |  thanks benyto...
tar still rules ;] |
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guycad$
In Search Of Free Speech
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Pompton Lakes, NJ
| reply to bluesea1
I happen to like both tar and dd. And the tar notes written up in the thread here are amoung the clearest I've seen.
There
are situations where you will not be able to use these for whatever
reason. This is because these instructions are essentially written from
the perspective of backing up a working system. For non-working
systems, Ghost or something like it can be more helpful.
Note:
there are a number of caveats to what I'm about to say so follow along
closely. I'm not trying to say do this or that because it's better. I'm
pointing out that no one backup / image copy procedure works best for
every situation and that it's a good idea to have a few different
'tricks up your sleeve' so to speak.
I
tear down and rebuild systems alot. This means I do a lot of disk
swapping between disparate systems including disparate OSes. I even
swap partitions between drives from time to time.
To that end,
I've got a minimal system with a itty bitty hard drive in it running
MSDOS 6.4. On it, I have Partition Commander and Spinrite. In the case,
I have two of those 'removeable' hard drive cases. So when I'm working
'directly' on a hard drive, I pop it into one of these cases, pop in
the case, boot to setup, identify the HD to the bios and then re-boot.
Partition
Commander allows me to copy hard drive partitions, shrink (some of)
them, expand (some of) them etc. depending on the partition type. It
also allows me to perform surface scanning and to not tie up one of my
main machines as needed. I.E. I can set Spinrite up to 'refresh' a hard
drives sectors for as long as it takes without losing the use of my
normal machines.
Now granted, this is overkill for most people.
However, if you need to initialise hard disks with the same partition
(you're setting up several identical machines) or you need to do a lot
of swapping / diagnostics, then you probably want to have this kind of
tool on hand as well. You don't need to have a working destination
system to untar the image. Just the hard disk you intend to use.
The
only thing Ghost has to offer over Partition Commander is the ability
to retrieve an image from over a network. I consider Partition
Commander to be much more useful.
BTW, I used to use Partition
Magic. Then they really annoyed me with their upgrade policy and the
fact that they put out version 3 with lots and lots of bugs just to be
able to say they supported FAT32. I don't like having someone elses
bugs eat my data.
For backing up an image / partition on a regular basis, in my opinion, you're probably better off using tar.
Of course, as always - YMMV
--
People who describe M$ software as 'mediocre' don't know the half of it. My Pictures. |
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benyto
Premium
join:2000-07-09
Chico, CA
| reply to bluesea1
I'm going to add another bit of information to this thread. Today I
wanted to transfer the data from my desktop hard drive to another hard
drive. I wanted to do this for two reasons: 1) I was running a bit shy
on free space on the five gig partition; 2) It allows me to compare the
exact same install on two different systems simultaneously.
Here's how I did it:
First,
I removed the 20 gig hard drive out of one of my computers and plugged
it in to my current desktop. I then wiped what were the /boot and /
partitions on this drive by running mke2fs. Once that was finished I
mounted what was going to be the / partition (/dev/hdd3) in /mnt. I
changed to the / directory on my desktop drive and issued this command:
# tar -cplP -X tar_ignore -f - . | (cd /mnt; tar xf -)
What's happening with this command?
Just
about everything before the pipe is the same as in my previous example.
This time, however, I removed /dev from my tar_ignore file. If you
don't copy over the /dev directory you won't be able to boot properly.
The file that is being created is a dash (-). This option causes tar to
write the information to standard output rather than to a file. This
allows us to pipe it to another command. The parentheses after the pipe
open up a new shell and run the commands within it. First, we change to
the /mnt directory (where the / partition of the new hard drive is
mounted). Then we use tar to extract a file, which is also a single
slash. In the case of extraction, tar grabs information from the
standard input. In this case it is extracting the stream that we sent
to the standard output before the pipe, and placing it in to the
current directory (/mnt, or the / partition of the new drive). And
that's it.
I then did the same thing with my /boot partition
(with the exception of the -X switch; there isn't anything in there I
want to skip over).
I powered down, removed the drive, put it
back in my other computer, and booted up. I had copied the hard drive
and was up in running in a matter of minutes, and now had two different
machines running identical software set ups. |
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subcultured
Premium
join:2001-08-21
Jamaica Plain, MA
| ^great explanation -- thanks :]
quick
question, though: by piping the standard output of tar in such a way,
is it creating unnecessary overhead? i think i remember reading that
such a command doesn't actually archive anything, but can't remember...
would a find command piped to "cp" be another viable option? a better
option?
--
this must be thursday. i never could get the hang of thursdays... |
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guycad$
In Search Of Free Speech
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Pompton Lakes, NJ | reply to benyto
oOOOOooooo! This is kewl! I've never seen it done this way before. This thread is definitely a keeper!
Thanks Benyto!!! |
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benyto
Premium
join:2000-07-09
Chico, CA
| reply to subcultured
quote:
quick
question, though: by piping the standard output of tar in such a way,
is it creating unnecessary overhead? i think i remember reading that
such a command doesn't actually archive anything
That's
pretty much the point. It allows you to make exact copies without
having to first store the data in a file archive on your hard drive
first. As far as overhead, ehh, I'm not sure that's a problem. It
literally took just a few minutes to copy my root partition, and
because the computer had to have been brought down in order to put the
other drive in it, it can be assumed nothing mission critical was going
on.
quote:
would a find command piped to "cp" be another viable option? a better option?
Quite possibly. I'd be interested to know if there are better ways to do this. However, I don't know them. |
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benyto
Premium
join:2000-07-09
Chico, CA | reply to guycad$
Glad you found it helpful, guycad. I agree that this is a good thread.
Some of the more mundane things like this really aren't discussed an
awful lot. |
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bluesea1
join:2001-07-25
Durham, NC | reply to bluesea1
hehe. Thanks you guys.
--
bluesea |
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guycad$
In Search Of Free Speech
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Pompton Lakes, NJ
| reply to benyto
Some of the more mundane things like this really aren't discussed an awful lot.
Nope, you're right. Most people just set up one way to do their backups and then never think about it.
--
People who describe M$ software as 'mediocre' don't know the half of it. My Pictures. |
|
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