Hi,

I am a real Newbie to Linux!

I need to do a complete back up (to some form of EXTERNAL DEVICE) of all System and Application software loaded on a customer's Acer Altos 300 running Red Hat Linux which is over 5 years old at a very minimum, Please can someone give me detailed guidance on how I can do this?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Kind Regards,
John R.

see at the bottom of page, look for similar threads.

Thank you for your reply,

However, I checked through the threads prior to sending my question, as none of them appear to relate to the exact same requirement that I have, and hence I need suupport which is appropriate to my situation. As a newbie I cannot afford to guess what might work in the five previous questions and answers, instead I need answers to my actual question.

Kind Regards,
John R.

i dont [think] there is a cookie-cutter program that will work in all distros and all instances (everyones requirement is slightly different -- raid(0,1,2,10),lvm,apps and config scripts, base install only, ...)

as a system admin you will probably have to get a little creative with the tools you have at hand.

i would start looking at rsync for file level backups... or if backups of partition/disk images makes better sense for your particular setup then have a look into dd.


also if you are using red hat you are probably paying for their support. have you tried logging a ticket on there customer access portal.

Hi Schneidz,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, unfortunately as a Newbie your first sentence means absolutely nothing to me?

I have inherited this system as hence I cannot afford to be creative on the only copy available to me. (Live System). To my knowledge there is no support available from Red Hat as once again I have not been there before now to set this up.

This is one of the reasons I have turned to you guys for help, as I was under the impression you would be able to put yourself back in my position (as a newbie) and give me a proper guide on what I need to do here so that I have an environment that I can safely learn more, but, until I have a copy of everything, I can't begin to do this!

Is there anything anyone can do to help me?

Kind Regards,
John R.

the first sentence of my previous post is not linux related; it is generic system/server admin stuff.i dont mean to be condescending but it seems that you dont have much system admin/tech support experience. while helping someone in any topic one must make assumptions to the baseline knowledge of the person needing help (there is a difference between driving directions to your house; versus, instructions on how to operate an automobile).

Thanks Schneidz,

I take no insult from what you say, nor do I profess to have sufficient experience to do the job I am trying to undertake, hence, this is why I am in contact with what I understand to be a very good and helpful forum.

If you were happy to talk me through the initial stages enabling me to get the 'Mirror Back-up' I have previously requested, this will enable me to go off and start learning and working in a safe environment to get me on the road to hopefully greater things! Ideally this will be done with a 'Real' system and application and while relating to an actual clients system. You must remember your own first steps and like me would have found the comfort of some initial mentoring very helpful?!

Are you willing to get me through this first stage of back-up?

Kind Regards,
John R.

if all you want to do is learn how to use linux then i would install it on another system (centos is very similer to redhat but i know fedora better).

you can run rpm -qa to get a list of all the sofware installed on the other machine and then install the same on the new one (anything installed outside of redhats package manager will not be listed).

________________

if you really want a mirror image of the old machine then make a live-usb of any distribution (e.g.- gparted live):
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php
fyi. the hard drive you want to copy to has to be at least the same size of the one you want to copy from.

reboot the source machine and set it to boot from the live-usb and post the results of: then run substitute x and y to whatever device node the internal / external drive are attached to on your system
(this can irreversibly delete all the data on your partition if you are not careful).

IF(!) you can shutdown the machine & the target HW is the same, then you can use Clonezilla.
To backup a running system, you could try Mondorescue.

Both of these backup everything, but that also includes the OS and device drivers, which is why identical HW is recommended.
Otherwise, create a new Os from scratch as mentioned above, and just backup the Apps & data.

Note however that backing up a running system can produce a backup that has the odd issue due to files being open/written to during the backup; try to bring the sytem down to a minimal run state first.

If you have an RDBMS for instance, you must use the DB specific tools to get a consistent backup eg mysqldump for mysql DB.

Please tell us what OS you have
and what are the major products/apps running and (as above), which DB, if any.