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and if you want to save disk space , why not try SliTaz .
but in my opinion , it is a basically good idea to also include the OS on the backup partition , that way, even if you don't have a live cd or live usb available , you can always boot to that untouched partition to restore.
perhaps , trying all these commands by doing them to a linux live cd (any , preferable to be big ~700MB ) so that you get an idea about the compression rates .
Maybe you're going a bit too far by reading the gzip source code , since you don't really need it . perhaps , reading the manpage , which would input alot of other useful info on what to add to the command in different situations.
as a last thought . it would be good to also add a boot manager to all this guide , and making slitaz boot directly from the iso located on the hardrive . and give it like 2 seconds before booting to default.
or you might want to install puppy linux with it's frugal install to the harddrive (which will use more space though)
but in it's menus it also has a option to use dd to make a backup of the drive. And maybe from that file , you can start compressing , or leave it as is , because anyways , since you will be making the partition for backup the same as the source one .
And if you leave it as is , you might also get faster restoring process , since it wont have to extract anything.
Sure, any minimal distro will to. I chose DSL cause it's only 50 MB, so you have a lot more free space to store your disk image backups. And regarding the boot manager, I'd prefer grub because I've had better experiences with it since it tends to work on more computers than lilo. One last thing I'd like to recommend to all the people who are willing to try this method out is to have a backup of their MBR (you can check out how to do this in the website you provided earlier), and/or save a copy of DSL in a USB stick or a boot CD because you will need this in case grub stops working for some reason, either to dd the backup directly into your hard drive or to reinstall grub all together. I have had some nasty experiences with error 13 in the past. This is the biggest risk when using this method but it is easily preventable. Glad you pointed the boot manager part out, I almost forgot about it.
Last edited by oscaringolilingo; 01-08-2011 at 12:46 AM.
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04 , Linux Mint Debian Edition , Microsoft Windows 7
Posts: 390
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nice to know i'm being of help.
ps: i edited the last post
EDIT: now i saw your edited post. yeah , i know , i was amazed too when i found out about it .. can you imagine there are even smaller distros... even though i'm not sure they have a graphical environment
Last edited by silvyus_06; 01-08-2011 at 01:02 AM.
EDIT: now i saw your edited post. yeah , i know , i was amazed too when i found out about it .. can you imagine there are even smaller distros... even though i'm not sure they have a graphical environment
I remember using HAL91 at one point, with a very, very old IBM 380XD thinkpad. It ran off a single floppy! Maybe that would be even more convenient. Well, I guess the guide is pretty open to choice now that this post is so detailed. I suppose people will modify it according to their needs, which is much more linuxy, I suppose.
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04 , Linux Mint Debian Edition , Microsoft Windows 7
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yeah .. it is impressive .. now ... 1.4MB is nothing , but then , was an entire OS ... huh ... i am only 13 years old though ... i wish being able to do that now ...
PS: you might want to consider to move your thread to Linux-General - Discussions ,now that this is getting more of a tastes thing , and we are stealing the ranking of other posts that are in need of help .
You can do that by reporting your first post and from there asking an admin if he's kind enough to move your thread.
yeah .. it is impressive .. now ... 1.4MB is nothing , but then , was an entire OS ... huh ... i am only 13 years old though ... i wish being able to do that now ...
PS: you might want to consider to move your thread to Linux-General - Discussions ,now that this is getting more of a tastes thing , and we are stealing the ranking of other posts that are in need of help .
You can do that by reporting your first post and from there asking an admin if he's kind enough to move your thread.
Woah, I started using linux back when I was 16, but stopped for a while because of school. You know, they would ask all the work to be done in standard windows formats and, unless you had a very powerful computer (which I didn't) there was no point in trying to virtualize or "wine" windows programs inside linux for school so, yeah, it sucked, I'm 22 now. You are young man, and I can tell you'll get good pretty soon, use that advantage. You should try some computer programming, I was doing some javascripting and html when I was your age, it's a great introduction, and that even helped me hack some public library computers from the kids' section back in the day hehe, they would block the whole internet except for some websites but with simple HTML I would be able to visit any website I wanted by writing an html link in an old-day CGI guestbook and clicking on it. Everything's probably much more secure now though, but that just means you have to study harder.
I'll take your advice and ask the mods to do that for me.
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04 , Linux Mint Debian Edition , Microsoft Windows 7
Posts: 390
Rep:
nice guide . now i saw the first post got edited and is much , much better now .
only a thing .. the CAPS LOCK is hard on the eye . try making it with normal letters , not with CAPS and highlight them with something like red or whatever you like but to not be hard on the eye
and where it says :
Quote:
6. When you are done, enter DSL/SliTaz/etc from grub and use this command:
Code:
sudo gzip -c /dev/sda1 > ~/sda1.img.gz
This compresses all the bits in sda1 (where you installed your system) and sotres(stores) that in sda1.img.gz. This is what you will use to restore your system when it crashes.
you can edit that also .
EDIT : and also , you might free the hassle of making another partition only for swap . since those two OS's are so stripped down they don't need swap , and the standards of today's computer are well over 256 MB , which is plenty for those distros.
Last edited by silvyus_06; 01-08-2011 at 01:58 AM.
nice guide . now i saw the first post got edited and is much , much better now .
only a thing .. the CAPS LOCK is hard on the eye . try making it with normal letters , not with CAPS and highlight them with something like red or whatever you like but to not be hard on the eye
and where it says :
you can edit that also .
EDIT : and also , you might free the hassle of making another partition only for swap . since those two OS's are so stripped down they don't need swap , and the standards of today's computer are well over 256 MB , which is plenty for those distros.
You were right, how rude of me to use caps. But for generality's sake I will keep the swap, since we don't know if the user's computer has very low RAM. I sometimes work with tiny computers with very little RAM so, I think it's best we keep it that way.
EDIT: Besides, it's intended to be a sketchy guide, the user should know they can alter it as much as they want. It would be a good idea to add a comment on that possibility though.
Last edited by oscaringolilingo; 01-08-2011 at 02:22 AM.
nice guide . now i saw the first post got edited and is much , much better now .
only a thing .. the CAPS LOCK is hard on the eye . try making it with normal letters , not with CAPS and highlight them with something like red or whatever you like but to not be hard on the eye
and where it says :
you can edit that also .
EDIT : and also , you might free the hassle of making another partition only for swap . since those two OS's are so stripped down they don't need swap , and the standards of today's computer are well over 256 MB , which is plenty for those distros.
BTW man! I hear it's a bad idea to install linux with no swap, just so you know.
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