On Jun 2, 2011 12:30 AM, "Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 4:27 AM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> > Hi :)
> >
> > I'm writing a script to backup the 4 Linux installs and the MBRs on my
> > machine.
> >
> > Is there a way to copy all 4 Linux by running one of those installs?
> >
> > With a lack of knowledge I would backup the 3 Linux that aren't running,
> > by the running Linux and than boot another Linux install, to backup the
> > previously running Linux.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ralf
>
> You'll need to establish network communications amon gthe Linux
> systems, with some tool with enough privileges to copy the data.
> Excellent freeware tools include Amanda (for tape backup), which runs
> a server on one host and clients on the same host and other hosts
> typically, and rsnapshot, which is much easier to recover lost files
> with and pretty much relies on a central server to have enough space
> to copy the live contents of the other systems.
I have used Amanda with disks.
Per using puppet; it just works. I mean, I haven't used it to mess with proc and sys but I'm almost certain it'll work for that.
What I'm recommending is that you take your base system (debian, centos, bsd, osx, whatever) and then figure out what configuration changes you need and configure puppet likewise. Figure out if there are any packages you install that aren't provided by your distro and make a repo of those packages locally. Then, if you need to restore, you can do as little or as much manual labor as you want, or you can sit back and eat some twinkies as your system rebuilds itself.
Note, I don't have my stuff down to this fine of a science. I just know I can with what I use. I also like systems that are pretty universal - puppet and Amanda are two such programs.
That being said, no one needs a complicated life. Just setup a public key with ssh for a user with privileges to what you want to backup and setup a cron job to rsync your data on your host. And if you want to save your mbr + partition table, just dd the first 512 bytes off each client and back that up too (just mbr is 448 bytes IIRC).