System backup.
 

How can i make a backup of my system??? I have not any tape unit, i would like to put my backup in a file on a partition of a disc mounted on my machine, is it possible? Which are the most important system directories to save in the backup???

man tar :)

Tar would be the default tool,
as for importance: it depends on
what kind of distro you're running,
how much stuff you compiled up
from source, how much is pre-packaged
and configured to defaults by the installation...

If it's an RPM based bootable distro you
probably only want to backup your
/etc
/home
/root

:)

If it's lots of effort that you put into it
compiling stuff up also save the targets
of your installations, like eg
/opt
/usr/local

HIH

Cheers,
Tink

ok, you can use the ghost routine by Norton Utilities, and you can
backup it from "disk" or a "partition" to a single file *.gho.

another way, you can use the dd command under linux.

but I'd like use the ghost.
Hope this helps.

tar is good for quick single full backups

tar clfvz - . > /mnt/destination

dump is good for incremental backups, but only on
ext2
dump -0ua -f - /dev/hda1 | gzip -9 > /destination/dump.gz

dar is a good utility combining features of each
dar -z3 -v -s 2000M -c /destination/hda1.dar -A /mnt/hda1

you can use dd or cat to backup a whole partition,
but including the empty space

dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip > /mnt/destination
cat /dev/hda1|gzip > /mnt/destination

Thanks to all :) , i like the "tar" way.
Is possible to make a partial backup of a directory including some subdirectories and excluding other subdirectories???

yes, but you'll have to read the man page for that

tar clfvpz - directory > /destination.tgz

That won't be a problem with tar. Tar accepts wildcards.

eg:

tar -cvzf /path/newfile.tgz /path/filename /path/dir* etc.. etc..

Martin