Prompted to do an update recently, so automatically did it only to find it was the same kernel as the one already on? after reboot error messages appearing. More updates appeared and hoping these would update the errors, i tried to install but told apt or synaptic are already running, but i have only just rebooted, so they cant be? can they? can anyone tell me how to check this or should i do (yet another) reinstall. on a related equally useful matter, i was looking for a useful backup prog before this happened so i could easily roll back, have looked at mindi mondo others, but none seem like a complete restore package like acronis or norton ghost. what do people recommend?
thanks.

Not sure about the specific apt-get issue as I am not a big enough Debian user to really diagnose such a problem.

However, if you are looking for a complete image backup of your system, I would suggest either G4U/G4L (Ghost for Unix / Ghost for Linux) or Partimage. Partimage makes an image file out of a single partition while G4U/G4L make an image of the entire drive that can be restored all at once. Which one you go with depends on your goals and the way you like to do things.

Hi,

You being from the UK, may I suggest you use paragraph breaks, proper capitalisation and more correct grammar. As is, your post is very difficult to read. Also, it would help if you could be a little more specific. "error messages appearing" doesn't really give us much to go on when assisting you.

Assuming you are using Ubuntu, you might have in the panel an icon indicating that there are updates. When it is grey, it is either retrieving updates itself, or detecting that someone else is. It might help to wait for a while (5-10 minutes or so), to make sure it finishes. Also, you might want to check network connections (i.e. add "system monitor" to your panel, or use "netstat -a") to see what is happening.

Good luck,

Kees-Jan

Mondo is a complete system backup. IMHO it does the exact same thing as Norton Ghost does. It creates an entire image of your system that can be burned to CD(s)/DVD(s) (and many other choices, like FTP/NFS etc). I create a Mondo DVD every month. It gives you the choice (like Ghost does) to backup the full system, or part of the system. Lately I've been doing partial backups, but in the beginning I did full system backups.

This DVD that mondo created is bootable, and if given the "nuke" command it will repartition, format, and reinstall your entire system exactly how it was when the backup was created. There are other choices too, like "interactive" which I've used a lot when changing partition sizes manually. Interactive will go step by step asking you a lot of questions on what you want to do.

I believe the option you are wanting is the full system backup to DVD and then restore using the nuke option.