System wide backup - need solution
 

So i run a small phpBB message board and ftp... It's an old computer and ready to die - i can jsut tell.. I heavily modified phpBB when i did so, i did it very messy-like. So i was wondering (because i've never done this before)

could i copy ALL the hard drives contents to another harddrive? as in EVERYTHING.. basically mirroring it?

I'd hate to weed through phpBB and the other modified software and backup the peices i need by hand.

any efficient, fast, durable solutions/comments welcome :)

I would recommend using a program like norton ghost to copy your drives contents to a new hard drive. There are alternative program that will also do this, I just can't remember their names.

Try using rsync. It works on local systems and over a network.

Set a new server up then on the old pc:
rsync -acvz /home/httpd NewServer:/home

Replace NewServer with the ip of the new server. and /home/httpd with the location of the data files.

You will also want to copy your mysql data to the new server.

If you want an imaging solution then check out partimage:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/partimage

For very basic mirroring you could use dd, but your best bet is probably partimage.

thank you.

So simply copying over the MySQL stuff wont break anything? THis is what im afraid of the most, as I don't understand MySQL fully atm :)

It didn't for me - I have 2 IDENTICAL servers at work and I just rsync the /var/lib/mysql directory and my phpBB works fine.