Please confirm backup routine
 

I have spent many hours searching the forum archives to do this install and backup and I am quit happy so far and loving linux!!!!!

This is my dual boot win2x / Redhat 9 disk 0
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 638 5124703+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 639 4866 33961410 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 639 3188 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 3189 3201 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3202 4736 12329856 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 4737 4866 1044193+ 82 Linux swap

make and check filesystem
[root@sixty root]# mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1

My backup copy command and result
[root@sixty root]# dd if=/dev/hda7 of=/dev/hdb1 bs=1024
12329856+0 records in
12329856+0 records out

The result after the dd copy when mounted
[root@sixty larry]# mount /dev/hdb1 /bkup
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1 12136356 2580812 8939052 23% /bkup

then edit /etc/fstab
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0?????????????????????
/dev/hda8 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /bkup ext3 defaults 1 2*********************
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

My question is, are these procedures correct? Do I have a viable copy of my working redhat installation on hdb1, and have I backed up the right partition? Or do I have a false sense of security? When I mounted hdb1, I was able to see files and directories that looked ok.
I also made images of all three partitions with Norton ghost 2003 on the win 2x sys. I may also look into mkCDrec.
Is there any reason for me to edit fstab to mount this partition or should it just sit in the back-ground waiting to save me. Does this "tmpfs /dev/shm" marked with ??? look like it belongs or is it something bad? Can I put the rest of the disk to any good use, like moving home/larry or somthing more important to a huge partition so I can collect a bunch of junk?

It looks to me like you have a valid copy of your install if you can mount it and the files are there. I however don't see much point in backing up to the same physical drive. If your hda fails, your backup is probably useless too. Unless of course you're only backing up in case of accidental file deletion, that's another story..

Actually the backup is made to hdb1, the first partition on a second hard drive, hda being the first hard drive. I would just like to know how to put the rest of hdb's 14 GB to good use. I would like to move MYSQL DB files there and all web page files for my Apache web server.

Check.. Should have read a little better :). I think the only way you can accomplish this is by splitting up hdb into more partitions.

Thanks for the input.