another one...
is there a simple way to backup/restore my installation (not /home partition)...

i wanna mess around a bit but i am too lazy for reinstalling and setting up the whole thingie again.

is there a simple way to backup the system and restore it when i messed up everything? (is it possible to copy linux? or do i have to take care about anything (e.g. lilo, ...)?)
i am a beginner and thinking about windows systems... you would have to SYS your harddrive and so on to make it bootable... (old DOS way)

or is it more simple with an backup tool?: what backup tool would you recommend (any links or information appreciated)

thanks!

The simplest way requires a spare hard drive and a copy of Knoppix. Create a ext2 or 3 partition on your spare drive then boot Knoppix and use PartImage to image your system or home directory. I do this when I am about to make major changes and have used the restore function a few times. Take a bit of time to study PartImage as it can be a bit tricky to figure out initially. Basically as root mount the partition you want to write the image to on /mnt eg mount -t ext2 /dev/hdxy /mnt When you go into PartImage it lists all the partitions select the one you want to image next it wants to know where you want to create the image so enter /mnt/directory_name/image_name.gz press F5 to continue and select the type of compression and F5 again.

parted is also a nice way to so that. i used to copy a (eg) rootpartition to another drive (>=size) and later told lilo to boot there (root=/dev/thisone).
for periodical backups dump&restore is ok, but a little bit messy to configure.

for easy backup check this site:

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue91/keates.html

i use it on a daily base, and it's very easy to backup

cheers