How to Backup & Restore Your Installation

A new la entry has been added:

How to Backup & Restore Your Installation

This how-to was originally sparked from my openSUSE, but it is probably applicable to any distro... **************************************************************************************************** ***************************************** Problem: In a typical (or not-so-typical) openSUSE 10.1 64bit installation with XFS filesystem take a total backup of the system that can be used to perform a bare-metal-restore on a new (larger capacity than original) hard disk... ============================================================================ Difficult points:

A couple of newbie questions...

I've been trying to do a similiar thing using your how-to as a guide, but copying a partition not a whole disk.

I have a test box with 2 hard drives, one with an installation of libranet 3.0 (debian based distro) & the other with debian 4.0. I've been trying to copy the home partition from the libranet drive to the home partition of the debian drive. I installed debian using the guided partitioning, using the LVM option with a separate home partition. I haven't been able to get this done. When I enter "mount -t auto /dev/hda5 /home/partimag" to mount the target partition, I get the message that it's already mounted (because it's a logical volume, I think...?) so the newbie questions: Does clonezilla work with LVM ? Also, the libranet partition is reiserfs, & the debian is ext3, is this a problem ?...I may be trying to do something that's not supported. If it SHOULD work, I can post some details.

Thanks for any info...

greybeard...

The title of this thread is misleading: it is not about how to backup and restore the installation, it is about how to backup/restore the entire disk, including a lot more than just the installation.

Nor is it about just any 'backup' or any 'restore': it is about a backup (rsp. restore) of the ENTIRE system state. No coverage of differential or incremental backup, no option to restore just a part instead of the whole thing.