I am trying to make a cron job that will backup partitions. I can use partimage GUI to back up partitions and it works great, but when I try using it running batch mode it locks up at "partimage: status: copying used data blocks". As far as I can see the image file was made, it just seems to lockup there.

The command I'm running is:

partimage -B=foo save -z1 -f3 -b -d /dev/scsi/host2/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 /root/backup/`date +%d%b%G`.server1.gz


Another question while I'm posting, as you can see I am using "/dev/scsi/host2/bus0/target1/lun0/part1" which is /dev/sda1. When I try and use /dev/sda1 it never works, any ideas why? I don't know a ton about the dev fs so it may be something real obvious.
Thanks

If anyone have experience with partimage using the command line. I would like to see examples of what other people have done.

Or is there a better program to do a full disk and/or partition backup using a network client, this is for a server at a remote location, so I won't be able to pop in a CD or floppy whnever I what to make an image.
Thanks

you may want to look at Crito"s reply here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ight=partimage

I have not tested it

I use PI in gui mode so can not help with commands

Here's my notes on partimage from the command line. I didn't include the save option but it shouldn't be too much different.

EDIT: Running partimage in batch mode to save the partitions would look something like this .....
partimage save -c -b -d -z2 -f3 /dev/hda2 /mnt/images/backup/linux
or
partimage save -B=foo -c -b -d -z2 -f3 /dev/hda2 /mnt/images/backup/linux

If you are going to clone an NTFS partition, you may want to run defrag and scandisk first.

Get a cd bootable version of linux like system rescue at http://www.sysresccd.org and bootup with that cd.

Mount the partition where the images are going to be saved to.
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/images/backup -t ext3

Run partimage to make the images and save it to the backup directory which was created in the previous step.

In this example, I have a dual boot system so I backed up both operating systems with partimage.

Save the ENTIRE PARTITION TABLE to a file using sfdisk.
sfdisk –d /dev/hda > /mnt/images/backup/partfile

If you have an Extended partition, sfdisk may give you an error when you try to restore. In this case, it's better to use dd to backup and restore the partition table.
dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/images/backup/mbrfile bs=512 count=1

The clone script will restore that partition table and MBR from files to the new hard drive using the commands:
sfdisk /dev/hda < /mnt/images/backup/partfile
or
dd if=/mnt/images/backup/mbrfile of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

After you have saved the images and the partition table, install the new hard drive, make sure that bios sees it as the /dev/hda ( Primary Master ) so you don’t accidently zap your backup images which are saved on the /dev/hdb ( Primary Slave ) .

Bootup with the rescue cd and run the clone script to restore the images to your new hard drive.