Restoring Backups
 

I may not have saved a backup properly to enable me to restore this, if I've lost the backup I can survive, but maybe I'm overlooking something obvious.

I am new to Linux and installed Mandriva without too much difficulty. I then managed to configure this to act as a Windows domain controller, added user accounts, set up shared directories, printers and so on. All in all quite a success given my limited experience.

I took a backup to CDROM using Mandriva's backup wizard. This left me with a bunch of files on the CD as follows:


backup_base_user_ntuser_20051210_204611.tar.gz
backup_incr_sys_20051210_204611.tar.gz
backup_incr_user_andrew_20051210_204611.tar.gz
backup_incr_user_root_20051210_204611.tar.gz
list_base_user_ntuser_20051210_204611.txt
list_incr_sys_20051210_204611.txt
list_incr_user_andrew_20051210_204611.txt
list_incr_user_root_20051210_204611.txt
TRANS.TBL


At this point I decided to completely re-install Mandriva with a bigger hard drive, believing that I had secured the previous configuration.

After installing Mandriva on the new drive I fired up the restore wizard and pointed it at the CD I had saved earlier. Surprisingly (to me), it didn't seem to like the contents of that CD - it was like it didn't understand the file layout.

Using RAR on my Windows PC I was able to open and review the tar.gz files no problem, so the CD itself hasn't got any problems with respect to its readability - it is just that I've got a bunch of compressed files which contain configuration data (e.g. smb.conf is in there), but no utility to restore these back onto a new Linux system.

No big deal if I've lost this backup, and I still have the original (smaller) hard disk if shove comes to push. But I'm interested to know whether I have a bunch of files on the CD which can be used to restore a previous configuration.

Andrew

The .tar.gz extension on the files document what we in the industry call a "tar ball"

do a:

man tar


Use tar tzvf backup_base_user_ntuser_20051210_204611.tar.gz | less

to review the contents of the file. If you are satisfied the file will be restored to the correct location, just type:

tar xzvf backup_base_user_ntuser_20051210_204611.tar.gz

I think konqueror can browse a tar ball as well, so you can drop and drag if that's your preferred method.

Thanks Jerre, thought it would be simple :)