lenny backups and recovery

[Adam Hardy <adam.ant@cyberspaceroad.com>]

Just recovered from a kernel-not-loading situation, without any data loss and 
happily wondering what I should do now to make sure I don't get the same 
adrenalin shot next time it happens.

I do have a removable usb hard drive for backups, onto which I copy stuff using 
cp -rp *

and I'm wondering how I should copy my linux configuration, and then how I 
restore it too when needed.

Do I just do

cp -rp /etc /media/external

and on recovery, just install all packages and then copy the whole /etc back?

I am looking at 
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/overview.html
but it was last updated in 2006 so I figure there might be some useful new stuff 
too somewhere.

Also wondering what the lenny installation cd 'rescue mode' does - and whether I 
need a boot floppy with a copy of my partition info?


Thanks
Adam