Hello!
After running Slackware for a while, I am trying Debian Lenny AMD64 now.

What would you recommend to create a backup of my Debian System. I mean something to be able to restore my system in case of failure.

My system has three partitions: /; SWAP and /home.

Thanks in advance,
Glore2002.-

Hi There,

I would recommend using some thing like clonezilla. Its like Norton Ghost, so It will take a backup image of either then entire drive, or just selected partitions.
Ideally just plug in a usb drive to save the image too, and away you go.

Thanks for the advice FragInHell!

That way Is it possible to restore data to partitions with different size than the source ones?

Glore2002.-

For data backup i use Backuppc, its a very good software that allows you make backups of your files and even other pcs attached to the network and can change a lots of parameters like, compression, time of full backups and incrementals backups. Check it out.

I use rsync to back up to external drives. It works very well, and I can restore my system from the backup just fine (have done it a couple times)
that is the command that's the heart of my backup script. It backs up / to /mnt/backup, and excludes things that don't need to be/ shouldn't be backed up.
I'm not big on the GUI programs, it generally makes restoring harder, with a full backup you can restore from pretty much any bootable linux disk, you can chroot in and change things around, using rsync makes your backups much more flexible.

might also look at live-helper

i never did backup before, so be a bit patient with my question please:
how would i restore the backup with that method?

@gnudude: how would i backup my system with lh?

thanks a lot for an answer.

To restore I boot from a knoppix CD. I cd to / (on the CD) and make 2 directories, /backup and /restore.
I mount the backup to /backup, and mount the computer's hard drive (what is / when you boot the computer) to /restore
then I use cp
EDIT: then, of course you will have to chroot into the system and install grub again.
You can try backing up and restoring the boot sector, but that usually doesn't work for me...
In any case, to back up grub
(change sda to whatever your hard drive is)
to restore grub
"bs=512 count=1" is sort of redundant restoring, because that should be the length of the backup, but in case you did something wrong, that could save you...

thanks 987687,
i wouldn`t have known that and it would have taken quite a while to figure that out
on my own (sounds so damn easy `restore the backup')
greetings
(btw: nice you and some of the forum-members are around,
but i surely miss all the others)

try something like
lh_config --bootstrap copy --debian-installer

gives me an error kinda " --debian-installer needs a parameter/argument" (or whatever).
as i`m a bit down i`ll keep that in mind for my futural progress with lh.

@987687:
i gotta easy question:
i got / /home /tmp /var and /usr on different partitions (but will never do that again), is that a problem when trying to restore? the backup seems to have worked (-> ~five minutes)

thanks

well yea....you didn't expect me to do all the work for you did ya...

man lh_config

To be quite honest, I have no idea... lol. But, if they are all mounted, I don't see why it would be a problem. Because by default rsync will backup EVERYTHING in the root tree (unless you exclude it), it will even back up ssh volumes mounted with sshfs.
The best way to check if it worked is to check to make sure everything is on the backups.

ahhh: finally i get what i need to feel healthy again. thanks for that.

987687: ok, thanks, seems fine, i`ll check it these days.

(note: my first backup ever made; thanks for the help )

the subsequent backups will go a lot faster with rsync, because it only backs up what has changed. The reason I love rsync. Makes backing up my 1TB raid bearable.