It's wet & dull.. Time for to backup Linux!

fusion1275 · 10-03-2009, 12:52 PM

Hi all,

As the title says.. I am attempting to create a backup of my linux machine that has a rather large disk. So am getting stuck!

Firstly if I run clonezilla on a 1TB disk (400GB = WIN, 200GB = LINUX with LVM, so could be extended if I need more space) will it backup a 1TB image if I run it using the disk image option??? OR will it only backup an image of the data on the physical disk??

Secondly, I have been looking at the below link and tar seems a good option for me. But say for example my system dies, I put a new install of Linux on and I unpack the tar on the new filesystem, That will only give me the data... what about the packages I have installed??? I wont have a clue what I have or did have installed???

Link:

Quote:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

Any help would be awesome.

eco · 10-03-2009, 01:13 PM

Hi,

You might look at rsync as a simple and very efficient way of backing up. tar will backup all your data each time while rsync will backup changes and new files, allow you to have a previous verson, use ssh to transfer data in encrypted mode, etc.

The only way I'd say assures you to get a system exacly as you left it is a disk image with dd but it's very slow.

You should be able to find a log file somewhere on your system that tels you what you had installed.... and anyway, reinstallation of packages is so easy, who cares if you have to do it again.

Hope this helps a bit.

fusion1275 · 10-03-2009, 01:57 PM

Hey thanks for the reply!

I have been down the rsync route before and it caused me to lose my whole music collection and also give me some time outs over the network. So would rather at first make an image of the barebone system which is how I will be needing it back to if the inevitable should happen. Then I can start thinking about rsync again as it is a good piece of software just a pain if it dont work.

So back to my initial questions. Will clonezilla do an image of the full 1TB disk? Or just the OS+data residing on the disk?

Thanks again for any help

sploot · 10-03-2009, 02:03 PM

I don't have any information regarding clonezilla, but I would suggest an alternative program. Try looking into dirvish. Its a great backup utility that will create a full backup the first time, then on incremental backups only backup modified files, while keeping them in different directories for restoring.

I feel like thats a bad explanation, so here is a link to the dirvish project page: http://www.dirvish.org/. There will be better information there. Hope this helps

smeezekitty · 10-03-2009, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sploot

I don't have any information regarding clonezilla, but I would suggest an alternative program. Try looking into dirvish. Its a great backup utility that will create a full backup the first time, then on incremental backups only backup modified files, while keeping them in different directories for restoring.

I feel like thats a bad explanation, so here is a link to the dirvish project page: http://www.dirvish.org/. There will be better information there. Hope this helps

if you dont have any information on it why are you sgjesting a different one?

sploot · 10-04-2009, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smeezekitty

if you dont have any information on it why are you sgjesting a different one?

I was inferring from the OP what function of clonezilla was to be, and noticing that an alternative program may perform a similar enough function that it would be sufficient for this purpose.