Re: Snapshot backup of debian installation
> On Sat, 12 Jul 2003, befu wrote:
>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>> I have an Old World Mac (Wallstreet) and have to boot with BootX from OS 9.
>
> The boot floppies work on my older (7xxx) macs. That's near enough
> single-user mode for me;-).
>
> Also, from my reading, a COFF-format kernel like this
> vmlinux.coff-2.4.18-powerpc
> boots directly from floppy.
>
I tried it with Chris Tillmans advise and booted into single-user mode by
inserting *only* "single" into the argument line of BootX.
Mounting the original debian partition on /mnt as ro (read only) and the
snapshot partition on /opt, I used the following command and being in the
/mnt directory:
cp -a * /opt/
It took just 2,5 minutes to copy all the files (1GB) and I could boot
flawlessly into the cloned snapshot after that as well. All the links seems
to be copied correctly.
By the way this is also an easy way to optimize/defragment the disk.
For subsequent updates I use
cp -auv * /opt/
Which takes a few seconds only.
This works as long as I connect my FireWire drive through the extension bay.
But I still want to make the FireWire and PCMCIA card to work in debian so I
can do it over FireWire.
>
>> So the single-user mode from within LINUX is no option. Additionally I can't
>> get PCMCIA and FireWire to work. So there is no other option than to do it
>> within MacOS X (or 9?). Of course if I had a second LINUX partition, I could
>> use your recommended commands from there, but still I haven't got the
>> FireWire to work.
> My experience of firewire is limited to IA32, and in that box it just
> worked. I've no experience of PCMCIA at all
> .
>> So, is there a possibility to do it from MacOS X?
>
> The one time I got to play with OSX, I was comforted to discover bash
> there under the hood. I'd not be surprised to find all the familiar
> backup tooks there too, including cpio, tar, maybe pax.
Yes they are all there on the Mac. I try to keep it simple and use cp -a.
>
> If they're not, building them from source shouldn't be hard.
>>>
>>>
>>> rsync, however, should do a fine job, provided you put all the right
>>> options on it, and there are quite a few you need.
>
> Did you check that you used _all_ applicable options for rsync? It
> really should work.
Do you agree in rsync -aH on MacOS X would do the job?
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
Thanks a lot for the help!
Befu
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