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.
> 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.
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.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
> --
>
> TIA
> befu
>
>
>
>
>
--
Cheers
John Summerfield
Please, no off-list mail at all at all. This address accepts mail only
from Debian addresses.
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