How to make a recovery partition windows like of my root folder[ubuntu]
 

I want to make it now because it is still under the size of a dvd 3.7GB and i want to put it safe on a dvd to restore fast and not have to customize anything in case of a disaster , like me running dd again :))

maybe clonezilla or something ... would be nice if it is compressed ..

who cares what is in root. we care about what you have installed. in the root tree. create a /home partition let it all crash. then reinstall. or do as i did I made my hole root system minus (home) a squashfs file then when I want to install it on any system I just unsquashfs the file add a home directory and I am up. use puppy linux to do it with then keep puppy to put your image on any system.

If you are going to build and compile stuff out side of your distro repository create the image. or build the packages and keep them in your home folder. if you are just going to just use the 40,000 or so pre-built packages
in your distro then when you install the system create a partition /home then just reinstall.
hope this helps. this is why linux is around let the tree fall but home is still there. It is a big deal.
I have 8 distros sharing home. and trust me I have home backed up on another hard drive. Home holds your users and they are the ones you worry about the data.
not the operating system. you can always reinstall just do a custom partition and do not format /dev/your_drive_partition_with_home on it.
from a admin point the users data is worth more than the root and system. systems can be reinstalled all to easy.If my users loose there data I am in big trouble.
not every user on my system wants slackware or Ubuntu etc. Multiple distro's one home different home users with with different user ID's.
Keep the lab happy.

Here is my /etc/fstab file from one of my systems.

More information...

Why do you want to do this?

You can reinstall your linux distribution easily enough. Your files and your personal setting will be on your /home partition, provided you have installed linux with a seperate /home, allowing you to reinstall the same linux that you are using, but not partitioning /home, and winding up with a duplicate of what you had before. The effect is the same as of having restored your linux installation.

In addition, you have, or should have, a backup copy of your system files that will allow you in fact to restore your system, and do so much more easily and much more surely than fooling around with a linux equivalent of a Windows Restore disk.

i use a ubuntu machine . i don't have windows anymore ...

i don't have any recovery partition . that is what i want to do , but put the backup files on my dvd

@Drakeo - thanks alot for the info . I already have a separate home , but i put many applets on my taskbars , installed many programs , a game and stuff , and i like my / partition .

i understand user files go to /home . that's why i did it . but if i reinstall i will always have to put all my programs back and i have a slow connection . i suppose the programs install in root , right ? and the program's config files go in home , or something like that.

i will be googling over how to make the squashfs . i saw that on the ubuntu's live cd they put a squashfs wich is the biggest file . i suppse that's the sysstem ?

I would be happy if more information of the squashfs would be given here.

I boot System Rescue CD and use partimage to create a backup onto an external disk. I could then later copy those to a CD or DVD if I wanted to do that.

that's a really nice useful program , i will do a new APTonCd to have it there , in the .iso file :) !

This may come in handy , i even bookmarked it's page for future reference .

But this is still , not what i'm looking for . I want to make a backup of my / partition and put it on a dvd , and when something goes wrong , i take my latest backup of / and restore it to / .

Is that possible ?

I'm still waiting any info over the squashfs.

And also , as a last question , i have lots of applets on my taskbars ( or gnome bars, you call it ) . Will the order of those be lost if i reinstall ?

EDIT:
@stress_junkie - now i see your post . i am downloading that right now . Still , while that is downloading , can i do anything of that kind with clonezilla ?

I finished downloading the system rescue cd ...

Tried to see if the iso is not corrupt or anything by boting it in virtualbox . (when i saw gentoo linux while it was booting it scared me :)) )


Before i burn it to a cd , i just want to be double sure ..

it is better than clonezilla , right ?

It is going to make a .pimg file that is going to be the image of my partition ..

Whenever i want to restore , i make it boot to ram and then click to restore it to the exact same partition where it was and it is supposed to work, right ?

is the partition going to be bootable ?

System Rescue CD is built on Gentoo. :)

It is more versatile than Clonezilla because you can use it to do more things than just backup and restore.

It will make an archive with any name that you choose. The archive will be broken up into 2 GB parts so that they will burn onto a CD. All of the files in a set will end in a three digit number. The first one will end in 000, the next will end in 001, etc.

You boot into RAM and you will see a shell prompt. You type
to start partimage.

Partimage will provide a graphic interface.

Partimage automatically saves the disk's MBR which you can restore from the backup file. You have to tell it to restore the MBR.

In the case that the disk is okay and you just want to restore Linux then Linux will boot after you restore it onto the same disk that was used to make the backup.

If you have to replace the disk then you will have to create the partitions using cfdisk, then run partimage to restore Linux and the MBR.

Actually since the MBR has the partition table I do this to restore onto a new disk drive.
1) Use partimage to restore the MBR.
2) Use cfdisk to make better partitions.
3) Use partimage to restore the system
4) Run mkswap on the swap partition

So it is not a one step operation if you restore onto a new disk.

It is a one step operation if you are restoring to a disk that already had Linux because Linux broke for some reason.

thanks a lot for the detailed response .

One last question ... How can 2GB fit onto a CD...

And also , another last question ...

from http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

i use ext4 ... in this case , is clonezilla more suitable ?

Ooops. :) I wasn't thinking. The 2 GB limit applies to single layer DVDs.

I didn't know that. I installed my Ubuntu on an ext3 file system

I just looked at the Clonezilla web page. It appears to be able to handle any file system type. Also ext4 is supported for copying only used blocks.

It appears that Clonezilla is a better solution for you.

@ stress_junkie i see that clonezilla only puts the image file in the source partition and is very hard to move it to another partition (i want to move it to a 200GB ntfs partition ) and the instructions seem very , very hard .. like chinese (!)

is there any danger if i try to copy the partition using the ext3 drivers of partimage ?

PS : lol man i downloaded system rescuecd just to find out that i had partimage on my hiren boot cd :\

EDIT : i don't know why my post got deleted .. anyways :

when using clonezilla to backup to my NTFS partition (the biggest one )

Before starting it says : ALL DATA ON THE PARTITION WILL BE LOST

does it really delete anything or just wants to scare me ... (because if it does , it really did ...)

update : that happened to me because i was using device to device , not device to image ..

now when i select everything as desired in device to image option , when everything starts , i want to put the image on my 4GB usb flash drive to copy it afterwards to a dvd . but then it gives some error , says something about questioning me : is the disk full , but i formated the ntfs drive to fat32 and it didnt work and then to fat16 again it didn't work i don't know what to do .

it says to check /var/lib/ and a file , but if i press eneter , it shuts down , and if i don't press nothing , it stays like that . help me please.
thanks

One of the easy way use dd to make a image of your current partition & then revert it if you loose some data. Follow these instructions.

hey guys . thank you everyone . i used stress_junkie's idea about partimage . at first i was scared about the idea to try to copy ext4 filesystem using ext3 drivers. but since a few failed attempts to do that using clonezilla i entered the partimage and made the backup . i am still impressed how it compressed the whole thing to half :o :)


as of dd , now i used the puppy linux off my usb and saw that i can make it use dd to copy my hdd if i want . i will read that tutorial for my knowledge anyways :) . (it has an option there )

so i guess i'm getting geekier everyday .

one last question (lol , 3rd last question :)) )

will it [partimage ] also compress to half my /home partition ( which is almost full of .iso files and media files ( mp3.)) )

or the old " media files get compressed better only with codecs " remains available

EDIT :
whoa the information on that blog is surprisingly awesome i like it alot i learned alot about dd.