I have a laptop, and I want to backup the entire drive, as I know that when I send it off to repair they will wipe Linux, and I've just spent about 48 CPU hours compiling Gentoo and OpenOffice etc. on it. I can't see how I could plug the hard drive into my desktop (it has a strange non-ATA connector...), so I tried samba. I shared my /, and connected to it, then ran
cp -a /mnt/samba /lapbak
. However, not only did this complain about things like etc/shadow, I also suspect that it was getting the permissions wrong. How would you suggest doing it? I'm currently (on the laptop) running
tar --preserve -cf root.tar /

I use devfsd on it (as this is the default and I didnt't see why I should change it).

EDIT: tar seems to be complaining a lot about /sys

backup? what about "dump" ?
good luck

You can actually get little adapters for the laptop harddrive ide connectors, to normal desktop ide connectors.
A quick google brought up this: http://www.cablestogo.com/product.as...=906&sku=17705
I have never used this store, and in no way am endorsing them, so I have no idea what they are likie, but just as an example.
A lot of different stores have them, or if you have a friend or something who does comp. repairs, he'll probably have one.

It's cool - I mounted the drive at /mnt/gentoo, then tarred it up and copied it across with samba, and it seems all right.

EDIT: in reference to the dump suggestion, a) I'm using xfs, but I could emerge xfsdump and b) what advantages does it have?

i dont know about xfs nor xfsdump.
i can say that dump is cool tool. it can backup complete of partition. also u can define dump level. so it backups only differences between previous lower level dump. as i remeber it has 9 levels. u can write a simple script and add it as cron job. so u can backup your patitions in different levels for different days of week. so u will have a backup system backwarded for everyday of last 7 days.

tar is as cool tool as dump i think u can add files which are modifed or created in recent (3) days to tar file like this:
find / -mtime -3 -type f | xargs tar rf /path/to/file.tar
but im not sure if it is a good idea. becuse it will probably try to add file.tar in same file.tar
hmmm. grep!!
find / -mtime -3 -type f |grep -v "/path/to"| xargs tar rf /path/to/file.tar
now it seems that it is a good idea

i love linux, because u have lots of choices

edit : u dont have to add newer files in that file.tar, it is better idea to backup newer files in another tar file.

good luck.

BTW: tar is clever, and doesn't try and add a file to itself - which would be silly....

I'm happy with my tar backup, although dump seems interesting and maybe I'll use it next time.

Thanks.