Backup my installation burning it on a DVD

PinRojas · 06-18-2005, 05:11 PM

Hi Guys,

Smebody could tell me How could backup my whole linux on a DVD disk?
I am spending a lot of time and I dont want to lose everything.

Salu2!

musicman_ace · 06-19-2005, 01:40 AM

you can try

tar cvjpf mybackup.tar.bz2 /*

You may want to exclude /proc, /dev, /tmp, and maybe a couple others. Also make sure that you have sufficient disk space on your hard drive.
<edit>
the tar flags

-c  Create
-v  Verbose output to screen
-j   Compress with bzip2
-p  Preserve file/folder permissions
-f  File to create
</edit>

PinRojas · 06-20-2005, 08:41 AM

Hi musicman_ace,

But, Is there any application for these with no big disk space requirements?
Any application that allow me use a CDROM as boot disk and restore data automagicly from a DVD disk. MS Win have this, and there is other tools from other vendor that allow recover your windows exactly to the last image backed up. Something more elegant.

Salu2!

musicman_ace · 06-20-2005, 11:31 AM

Not that I'm aware of. You could always create a bootable linux cd with the mkisofs and cdrecord tools.
Using what I described allows me to boot any live CD, format the hard drive, and then un-tar the archive. Since I use gentoo, there are a couple tools available on their live CD to make this process easier. I've never played with debian bases distros, so I don't know what is available from their live CDs.

harken · 06-20-2005, 01:05 PM

I think that the closest you'll get is using something like dar, which allows you to restore individual files/directories. It is available as a .deb package so you can apt-get it.