* nate <debian-user@aphroland.org> [20030317 10:45 PST]: > Brian Victor said: > > I backed up my debian installation with the following: > > > > tar --preserve -cv / | ssh 192.168.2.10 'cat > linuxbackup.tar.bz2' > > may I ask why? I have never heard of someone attempting such > a task in that manor. I would say that the above is the source of > the problems. Checking tar's manpage reveals no mention of the > preserve option either. I just tested using tar -cvf making a tar I'll bet you got bitten by the manpage using hyphens in place of minus signs for options. (One of my big pet peeves...) Search for just /preserve/ instead of /--preserve/. It's there. > file with symlinks and extracted it with tar -xvf and the symlinks > were preserved. You probably do not want to try to tar up the > entire root partition as that includes /proc which is generally a > real bad thing to try to backup. Agreed. Tarring up the whole of '/' is a bad idea. > I would reccomend tarring to a file then copying the file over. > Or, rsync(preferred rsync -av), or use NFS and tar to the NFS mount. I disagree that there's anything wrong with "| ssh 'cat > filename'", though. Especially on a machine which has nothing but ssh on it; there's no reason to want to install portmap and nfs just for backups, when ssh will do just fine. Rsync is great for backups, too, but still, I run that over ssh. For many simple purposes, tar is a great utility for backups. It's not for everything, every time, but it works. > As for fixing your system, if all the files are chmod'd 000 your > pretty much screwed as far as getting it back to a normal state, > you may be able to run apt-get and have it reinstall all packages > to hopefully restore all permissions, otherwise if it was my system > I would backup the data I wanna keep & reinstall. This is also good advice. You should make an estimate of how difficult a reinstall would be (saving your un-reinstallable data) and decide whether it's worth the pain of trying to get every file back to the right state. good times, Vineet -- http://www.doorstop.net/ -- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin
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