Re: back up and lilo

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

hi ya hans

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Hans wrote:

> Happy Easter,
> 
> I want to experiment a little bit with my system. Before that I want to 
> back up my stable system to another partition, in case I mess up. What 
> is the smartest way to do that and how do I change lilo.conf so that I 
> can boot in to both partitions?
> 
> E.g. stable system on /dev/hda3 --> back up to /dev/hda7. Lilo points to 
> /dev/hda3 as Debian and to /dev/hda7 as Debian_backup.

"smartest" way to do backups .. assuming you want to protect your data

a) if your data is on /dev/hda ... than backup to another disk on another
   PC  -- never backup to the same disk
	- if the disk dies, you lose both main and backup stuff

	- if your system goes down, you might not be able to boot
	off /dev/hda7 if your MBR went bonkers

b) cp /etc/lilo.conf /etc/lilo.backup.conf

c) you can copy everyging from /dev/hda3 to /dev/hda7  but why ??
	"debian setup/files" is already backed up millions of times
	on the web

d) you only want to backup your pkg config, /etc and "/home"

	to save your "important data"  
 
	root# mount /dev/hda7 /mnt/backup
	root# tar cf - /etc /home | ( cd /mnt/backup ; tar xvfp - )
		( but you should backup only the changes ) 
	root# umount /mnt/backup  ( important )

	gazillions ways to backup stuff
	http://www.Linux-Backup.net

c ya
alvin