backing up a linux box.. any ideas?

Chypmunk · 04-06-2002, 09:28 PM

Hey all! I recentally decided I need my hard-disk space back that my linux os is using up.. I really like linux, and have it set up amazing..

I need to know how to back up everything I have, and preferably save it to a file that I can put on backup medium.. I don't want to loose all the installed programs either..

Thankyou!
Jude

neo77777 · 04-06-2002, 09:43 PM

you can use tar archive to compress the files into a single tarball, for instance
tar cvf backup.tar /home
it will archive the whole /home filesystem and save it under backup.tar. Also there are mindi and mondo utils available on the net to perform archiving http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/

Aussie · 04-06-2002, 10:21 PM

I recomend Mondo. I've used it to restore a complete system to bare metal.

Chypmunk · 04-06-2002, 10:33 PM

allrite.. So if I save everything in my /home directory, that keeps all of my files intact.. What about the stuff in the boot and bin directorys? aren't they important as whell?

And also, Aproximitally, how big would these files be? If needed, can I tell tar to make files of certain size for disk spanning?

Thanx..
Jude

neo77777 · 04-06-2002, 10:37 PM

As far as tar is your chooosen solution, you can't specify what is the file size you want you can further shrink it by creating compressed tar with
tar cvfz backup.tar.gz /home /etc /usr
but I used home as an example in my first reply. If you want the snapshot of the whole system go with mondo.

Chypmunk · 04-07-2002, 11:25 AM

a'ight.. Thanx.
Jude