Backup whole Redhat system
 

I want to help a friend who has a small network with some version of Redhat running on a main computer as the internet gateway. He knows virtually nothing about linux (I have some knowledge) so before I touch anything, I want to protect myself by backing up everything on the Redhat server.

I intend to make rescue disks... then login as root and type "tar -cfv backup.tar /" then move this file to another hard disk for storage, also burn it to CDs or DVD.

Is this the right way to go about it?

Thanks for any help and advice.

i think that is possible. alternatively you can,

1. put second harddisk on the server, boot using rescue disk or any linux cd & copy using dd command (dd if=/dev/xxx of=/dev/yyy) - I used to use this method

2. Use ghost for linux to copy hard disk image to another harddisk

3. Norton Ghost :-)

If you use tar then you will need to split it to fit on multiple CDs/DVDs i would also suggest gunzipping it aswell, not sure how much space it would save but the more the better right?

I'm hesitant to do anything invasive like shut down the linux box and add another hard disk to it.

So the Norton Ghost option looks appealing assuming it's done over the network from a Windows computer where the image would be stored. Is it easy to do?

Say the total size to tar and split is 1Gig, then there would be 10x 100Mb files. Is it possible for tar to prompt me with a Continue(y/n) before each 100MB file is to be created? I'm afraid to overrun the hard disk if it is small or almost full.

just curious, what exactly you want to do with that server? you may backup first the files that you are going to touch...

gives you its manual page, you can look up the options there. As for filling the harddrive...

you're backing up the whole of /, so how big is that? you then need a partition (you can use / since you'll be copying the files first right?)/other drive/something else that is big enough will show what you need. As long as wherever your creating the tars shows more FREE space than the / then it's ok...

Thanks guys. Everything worked out. I'd like to know how to make an image of it with Norton Ghost sometime in the near future.