Backup solution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 4
 

What is the easiest and free way to create a full server image with backup data on this OS? I've been banging my head against the wall trying to configure amanda properly and am considering abandoning the damn thing.

A well documented walkthrough of amanda requires tar 1.15 or greater. Unfortunately there isn't an rpm for a tar newer than 1.14 on this OS.

If you have plenty of backup space then I suggest that you not bother with compression or the tar command. Instead back up with the cp command. Something like:

cp -au /bin /backup/bin

cp -au /boot /backup/boot

cp -au /etc /backup/etc

cp -au /home /backup/home

and so on.

See:

man cp

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Steve Stites

Are you on a really old release of RHEL 4? You have to go all the way back to 2004 for a GNU Tar release before 1.15 according to http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/#releases

I believe the Amanda compatibility page is primarily pointing out difficulties that tar has when you push it to do complete backup and recovery. Check the footnotes at http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/FAQ...-compatible%3F. Nothing to stop you from using an older Tar, except that you will probably run into difficulties when it is pushed.

I wouldn't stoop to cp if I was concerned about doing a complete image backup and being able to recover from it. There are lots of tools designed for this purpose. Find one that suits you. Try googling "linux image backup" and take it from there.

we just did an amanda project in class. here is my documentation. I hope it helps. you can find it here: http://www.kylecorey.ca/?q=node/43

Amanda was very difficult, but once it worked it worked.

GL

If you wanted to take a 'one-off' copy of the system (which could be restored later)

Boot from CD, then do either:

To backup:
dd if=/dev/sda | ssh user@host dd of=kickstart.img

To restore:
dd if=kickstart.img | ssh user@host dd of=/dev/sda

STu.

you also can use webmin's backup scripts.
or partimage or ghost4linux