Re: Snapshot backup of debian installation
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, befu wrote:
>
> Recently I tried to make a snapshot backup (mirroring, cloning) of my 1GB
> debian installation partition. For that purpose I prepared an empty 2GB
> LINUX partition on my external FireWire drive.
> Within MacOS X and having Ext2FS_1.0a3 installed I first cloned my
> installation to the FireWire partition with CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner, by Mike
> Bombich). That took me about 2,5 hours. My intention was to update this
> snapshot from time to time with the rsync -av --delete command in MacOS X.
> So I used rsync after CCC. When I booted into the cloned snapshot, the
> system was able to boot and I could use kde as normal. But I think some of
> the symbolic or hard links were broken. So I don't think the installation
> was really cloned and usable for a back-cloning.
>
> What is you recommendation of such an approach? I also thought of an rsync
> within debian. But to be able to do this I need PCMCIA support on my
> Wallstreet G3 (for my FireWire PCMCIA card) and FireWire support and
> function, which I still couldn't get to work. I also would prefer to do the
> backup within MacOS X as it is my main working area.
>
> I use woody with the 2.4.21ben2 kernel.
>
_I_ would do it from Linux, initially using 'cp -a' or
'tar cl <and some other options> <mount points to backup> \
| tar xpC /mnt/firewire'
Preferably, in single-user mode.
rsync, however, should do a fine job, provided you put all the right
options on it, and there are quite a few you need.
You can also use dd (I was quite surprised at this!), provided that the
destination partition is not smaller than the source (you don't want to
loose data!). You fix the partition size with resize2fs and e2fsck.
If you want to clone systems, a tarball (potentially on CD) is hard to
beat. You can restore to different partition layouts, to different
filesystems, to RAID and/LVM (or not).
LVM has tools to allow you to take a consistent backup of live
filesystems: it's worth looking at.
>
>
>
--
Cheers
John Summerfield
Please, no off-list mail at all at all. This address accepts mail only
from Debian addresses.
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