Re: Making an image of my HDD
> dd if=${device} conv=sync,noerror bs=64K | ssh -l ${user} ${host} "dd
> of=file.bin bs=64K"
Unless you need to encrypt, I recommend that you just use netcat
instead of ssh, as it will be faster.
I also recommend a larger block size. Using a 64k block size will
take a long time, even if you take encryption out of the equation.
You should also boot from a Live CD; using dd to backup a mounted
filesystem can easily result in a corrupt backup image. Off the top
of my head, I seem to remember Trinity Rescue Kit & Knoppix having
netcat, dd, and ssh.
The "noerror" conversion is unneccessary. If dd is giving you input
errors, replace your hard drive and use dd_rescue to salvage your
data. Also, I don't think you need to use the "sync" option in this
case. I've never used it for my backups, and they have turned out
perfectly.
As long as you triple-check your if= and your of= before you hit enter
you shouldn't have any major issues. :-)
I also recommend you compress the image to save bandwidth and storage
space, although bzip2 has a 900k cap on its block size, so any larger
blocksizes passed to dd will be moot.
dd if=${device} bs=900k | bzip2 -9c | ssh -l ${user} ${host} "dd
of=backup.img.bz2"
Then verify the image.
on the laptop:
dd if=${device} bs=50M | md5sum
on the server:
bzip2 -d < backup.img.bz2 | md5sum
Someone please correct me if this is wrong.
-Elijah
--
http://elijahr.blogspot.com/
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