i bought a new iomega external cdrw/dvd player/ usb 2.0 and it worked imemdiately- i was shocked. i had to figure out that i needed ide-scsi loaded to burn a cd but once done that works great too after installing and figuring out cdrecord. anyhow....

i would like to backup my system prior to upgrading suse 9.0 to 9.1 and can't seem o get anything to work.
trying mondo i went through about 10 rpms that i needed to deal w/inconsistancies and finally found i couldnt install one called libslang i think.. i found some info on installing the rpm with the --nodeps option but havent tried yet

i tried the partimage bootcd and when that boots up it gets to a point that says it cant open the cd image (its booting on the cd?!?!), so maybe i need to go through a boot floppy?? (which id have to add to the system-doable i guess
i tried using the backup in yast but that filled up my hardrive space, crashed, then wouldnt let me in as a my usual user.. luckily root got me in and i could delete the file which luckily allowed me to log in again..

so before i go nuts (some more) maybe someone can point me down a particular road of insanity (ie what disk image or backup software do you recommend that'll do the whole drive)?

i have not yet downloaded or tried the mondo installation cd.. anybody tried that? what id really like is some standard (as in windoze: BE or Arcserve equivalent but open source) backup software that'll get everything except certain data i dont have room or need to backup like a lot of mp3's..

any tips for the ones ive tried or something new thats not going to send me over the edge? i cannot believe what a pain it is to install software.. but i am still amazed at the greast efforts put into this by so many people

thanks!

this is a great backup/rescue CD:
http://www.sysresccd.org/

a simple way to backup is to mount a big drive from another computer over nfs then
dump -0f /mnt/bigNfsDrive/hda1.dump /dev/hda1
dump -0f /mnt/bigNfsDrive/hda2.dump /dev/hda2
etc...

then to restore, mkfs hda1, mount hda1, cd into root of hda1, then
restore -rf /mnt/bigNfsDrive/hda1.dump
etc...

dd works to do the 'whole drive' but copies unused space which i avoid by using the method above.

thanks! i will look into them.. what about actual backup software with a interface for selecting files? im downloading the sysreccd now i THINK its the one i tried yestersay.. we'll see. i do have another windows machine networked via samba (never did anything w./nfs yet) which i could dump to i guess.

my situation is i have a small (<2G) drive to backup and would like to go directly to the cd or cdrw disk. (or to image first then cd/cd's.. ) selecting just crucial data or at least allowing me to span a cd or 2

if it were me i'd mount the samba share after booting to the system rescue cd instead of writing to cd's simply because i've had more system backups go corrupt on CD media than with hard disks. i don't know enough about cdrecord to burn backups directly anyway, but would guess it's possible. just because i know it works, i'd dump over samba then burn from the other computer but wonder if somebody else can suggest a method to do this directly. as for a gui to grab certain files, this is a good one:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/gentoo/

cheers, -bp