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Re: An experiment in backup



On 01/15/2015 07:19 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
I'm trying to develop a reliable backup method that does not use
proprietary tools or formats, and is free as in beer.  I thought I had it,
but i just tried a restore, and it's a miserable failure.  I wonder if
anyone here can point out the error of my ways.

I have a tar backup of the entire system, excluding /sys, /proc and /dev.
I have a tar backup of a bind-mount of /dev.
These were taken while the system was running, but quiet.  I did it this
way because I cannot get the system to boot into single user mode.  Putting
"single" on the end of the "linux" like results in a black screen.

I restored these, created /sys and /proc, and tried to boot the resulting
partition.  It boots, but X does not come up, or even seem to try.  I can
do a console login to my usual account, and stuff is there.

I'm quite clueless as to why this is happening.  I could sure use some help.

There are two basic kinds of "backups":

1. File system -- e.g. a copy of the files and directories on an mounted and operating drive.

2. Raw binary image -- e.g. a copy of the bytes on a drive taken when the drive is powered, but the partitions, volumes, file systems, etc., are not mounted.


For system drives, the former won't work; you need the later. I connect a large hard drive (to hold the images), boot Debian installation media into rescue mode, and use 'dd' to backup/ restore system drive raw binary images.


HTH,

David


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