backups
 

Would like info about dd backups and/or other BU programs
for a newbie. Thanks

IMHO using dd would be an inefficient means of backup up your files, as it will copy, byte for byte, all the data, when in actuality some it is unnecessary. It would be better to have a program or script to copy the files themselves instead of the blocks of data with dd.

Unless you're trying to get a complete image of your hard drive, exactly as you have it, same UUID and everything. For that, dd would work fine.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...h-help-939071/

that thread has a backup script you are welcome to modify to fit your needs. it handles lftp, tar compression, and rsync out to mount points and or url locations.

the tars are also verified and then encrypted and verified again.

enjoy.

Here is a thread Learn the dd command which can help you in various ways for backups also.

rsync is likely more commonly used for backups than dd.

Back in Time is a graphical front-end for rsync. Sourcetrunk reviewed it a while ago. http://www.sourcetrunk.com/node/130

I would agree on rsync. It is the tool everyone should keep handy for backups combined with tar. Very efficient way of taking backups using scripts and scheduling.

I've been tinkering around with duplicity quite a bit lately, and I like what I see so far. It's a python program that has many features in common with rsync, but also seamlessly handles compression and encryption of back-ups (via GPG). You might want to give it a look.

this looks real nice, im going to play around with this little toy. now just to see if i can get it running on FC5, FC7, and CentOS5.4 as well as CentOS6.2 nice nice nice. should not be to much of an issue if i can learn how to install something from source :D... yum, as bad as it is, is nice for people like me who are still cutting their teeth on linux.

You can also checkout the rsync on wikipedia and also the man page of rsync.

The biggest issue I faced in setting up an rsync script was figuring out what set of command arguments would meet my needs.

I finally settled on rsync -arv for doing a simple backup of /home from my primary laptop to my file manager for archival purposes.

Yes. Everyone would have different backup needs. Only way to settle down on rsync options is to figure out the exact backup requirement and study rsync thoroughly before implementing. Testing out with dry run to see what rsync exactly is doing helps a lot in determining the options of need.

dd backups
 

Thanks to all for the replies. Being a newbie, naturally I'm trying (and screwing up) most everything at first. I was an old self taught DOS 1 beginner back in '84. I'm now running a gonzo desktop with Win 7 and an Oracle VMbox with Ubuntu, and Mint 12 LXDE on an old hp laptop. My old desktop is out in the garage and is a dual boot XP & Ubuntu 12.04. All wireless through a D-link. What I'm trying to do is to see how easy or hard it is to maybe "S..t" can Windows entirely.