Hi all!

I have been looking for a complete backup solution like "Acronis True Image Backup and Recovery" on Windows for Slackware a while.

Do you guys have any recommendations?

Thanks.

Perhaps you could list the features provided by that particular bit of Windows software which you want in your backup solution.

Disk imaging and recovery isn't really the same as a complete backup solution. They address different issues. Acronis (http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/) does disk imaging for disaster recovery. If you search the linuxquestions forums for the past year on Acronis, you will find a variety of recommendations, for example, Partimage (http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page) or Clonzilla (http://linuxgravity.com/creating-and...with-clonzilla).

General backup solutions are a different sort of thing. Scan through http://www.linuxquestions.org/bookmarks/tags/backup, and you will find examples of both. Amanda is my choice for general network backup of multiple machines. If you're dealing with a smaller situation, you might want something different, say, rsnapshot or backuppc or . . .

For general background and learning on backup and recovery, see the O'Reilly book "Backup and Recovery" by W. Curtis Preston - http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102463, or check out the companion web site http://www.backupcentral.com/.

1 members found this post helpful.

Have a look at the packages here:

http://www.easeus.com/

'Disk Copy' works with any OS.

Bill.

It's surprising that Ubuntu does not come up with a decent backup and recovery tool -- probably the greatest shortcoming of Ubuntu at this time. I have successfully created system recovery discs with remastersys, but the software is flaky (limited to 4 gb) and sparsely documented.

Another option (which I have not yet installed) is bubakup.

Personally, I just use tar to back up my system, but that's probably not kind of solution you're looking for.

This is the Slackware forum

Thanks a lot guys!I can't imagine there are many replies from my question in such a short time!

choogendyk, thanks for your recommendation on partimage and Clonzilla.But isn't it that the system must be rebooted and boot from the cd/dvd to do the backup? I just want a software which will do the backup without booting from cd/dvd.

Toods, I will take a look at it and try it.

Thanks all again.

I mentioned Ubuntu only because I didn't have personal experience with Slackware, although the OP suggests that Slackware, like most (all?) Linux distros doesn't come with a pre-packaged backup solution. Backing up data is pretty straightforward, but restoring a trashed system from a recovery image is more challenging (and essential). Typical situation is, "Help! I just upgraded to XXX, and now my computer won't boot."

Choogendyk, thank you so much for the pointer to Clonezilla, which seems to be exactly what I've been looking for. Especially nice that their documentation consists of a video tutorial.

(a bit long and tutorial like, but hopefully useful and informative)

Although most sysadmins can't afford the downtime (or to be there in the middle of the night all the time) and don't follow the recommendation, the official line on backing up an OS is that you should at least take it down to single user to run backups. You'll find this in Sun's documentation for ufsdump, for example. The reason is that a running OS and running applications can have data in memory that hasn't been flushed to disk at the instant that the backup software wants to read that portion of disk. In itself that might not be an issue, but there may be different pieces of data at different points in time and position on the disk that end up not being backed up in a consistent way because of lack of coordination between the live OS, live applications, and the backup software. This is particularly an issue with database software like Oracle or MySQL, which have their own procedures for locking tables/transactions and dumping data.

When a backup runs over a lengthy period of time, the exposure to inconsistencies increases. The use of snapshots radically reduces (but does not eliminate) exposure to inconsistencies. Using LVM snapshots, or Solaris fssnap with ufsdump, or ZFS snapshots, can reduce the exposure to seconds. They make it feasible to shut down an application, take the snapshot, restart the application, and then backup the snapshot. This kind of procedure is routinely incorporated into backup software like Amanda. However, it's not foolproof. I've been doing this with Amanda for years. I don't often have to recover an OS. Usually, I'm recovering someone's lost or corrupted file. Of the times when I have had to recover an OS, I have had one that simply would not boot after the recovery. The backup seemed to be good, and the recovery went without any complaints, but the system would not boot. I did an update install over the top of the recovered system and it was alright. But that is the risk that is taken backing up live systems.

This problem with inconsistencies in an OS backup is one of the reasons for keeping multiple backups or using multiple methods of backup. For example, you might use something like clonzilla to backup the OS (and do it from a system booted off CD/DVD), and then run regular data backups using something else that runs off cron on the live system. If you need to recover the OS, do it from the clonzilla backup and then recover data files from the other backup system.

Another alternative that a lot of people have adopted is to simply backup partitions that will have data in them (e.g. /home, /var, /usr/local, and /etc), and don't bother with the OS. If there is a problem with the OS and it needs to be restored, just reinstall it and then recover the data partitions.

Whatever method is used, databases need particular attention. Look up specifics on the support sites for the particular database engine. Oracle has RMAN. MySQL has it's own methods - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...-recovery.html, and can have a completely integrated backup using ZRM for MySQL - http://www.zmanda.com/backup-mysql.html. Database backups can then be pushed to tape if desired by something like Amanda.

Bottom line is that while you might want to run backups of your data on a regular (daily) basis, something like clonzilla is intended for periodic use after a fresh install or a significant update. The inconvenience of taking the system down should be infrequent, but it should provide some level of confidence that the OS backup is consistent and good.

Check out Clonezilla. It has performed admirably for me.

Check out Bacula

Thank you for the pointer to Bacula; it looks promising and well documented. No matter what I tried, I could not get Clonezilla to backup to the device of my choosing. Bubakup doesn't support grub2, and aa1backup (which is very small and elegant) doesn't support ext4.

Reading the Bacula docs, I especially appreciate this: