Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Mon, 5 May 2008 00:04:44 -0400, Ian Graeme Hilt wrote: tar xvfp SYSTEM.tar.bz2 To extract bzip2 files with tar, you need to add the j option. That hasn't been needed for a long time. Tar is able to detect bzip2 and gzip compression and handle it automatically. -- Neil Bothwick The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays adialog box and lets you press OK first. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 09:37:49AM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Mon, 5 May 2008 00:04:44 -0400, Ian Graeme Hilt wrote: tar xvfp SYSTEM.tar.bz2 To extract bzip2 files with tar, you need to add the j option. That hasn't been needed for a long time. Tar is able to detect bzip2 and gzip compression and handle it automatically. You are correct. I didn't realize it could detect. Thanks for the info. -- Ian Graeme Hilt ian.hilt (at) gmail.com GnuPG key: 0x4AFC1EE3 -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Mon, 5 May 2008 08:17:01 -0400, Ian Graeme Hilt wrote: That hasn't been needed for a long time. Tar is able to detect bzip2 and gzip compression and handle it automatically. You are correct. I didn't realize it could detect. Thanks for the info. It may only save one character when using it fro the command line, but it makes using tar in scripts a lot cleaner. -- Neil Bothwick Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
Hi Mark, Mark Knecht a écrit : [...] happen I have a way to restore where I am today. Since the disk usage is currently about 4GB it seems like a great time to do it. Is this possible? I think it's essentially what the stage 3 file is that I use when I install, isn't it? If you don't export stage3 and /usr/portage/ files, your backup will be lighter. The portage tree shouldn't be backed up because it shall be outdated when you'll restore, and emerge --sync will bring it back (except if you plan to restore in two weeks and have a low speed connection so you use emerge-delta-webrsync, but in that case you already know why you need to keep the tree). For stage3, you can safely discard it. Cf. exclude-dires in man tar From the running system here's what things look like right now: laptop1 ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 15820524 3641240 11375636 25% / udev 10240 172 10068 2% /dev /dev/sda6 1320272189304 1063900 16% /var /dev/sda7 10278304312012 9444184 4% /home shm1003844 0 1003844 0% /dev/shm laptop1 ~ # Tip: use df -h and put it as an alias (alias df='df -h' in .bashrc) ;) My thought is to boot using the install CD, mount a USB drive at /mnt/gentoo, then create a mount point 'backup' on the USB drive to mount each of the 3 partitions I want to back up one at a time. ( /, /var and /home) Then I'll mount each partition by itself and use tar to create a single file for each partition where that file gets written on the USB drive. When I'm done I have 3 files. Thus, you would be able to restore only one partition if needed, and there is less chance that all your archive becomes corrupted. I would process the same way. You also ought to backup the full MBR, which is a good practice, so you can bring back your boot sector and the partition table. Backing it up if very painless, just a dd command, cf. http://gentoo-wiki.com/MBR . And it saves a *lot* of time when restoring (especially when there is @$#! vista partitions with more sectors than there is really on the disk...) Restore would be to create the partitions anew, untar, install grub from in the chroot, and reboot. So, restore would be a dd command for the MBR, and a mkfs on your partitions, then untar your backups. So you wouldn't even need to chroot Is this a reasonable way to go? Is there something easier? (That seems pretty easy to me...) It is reasonable, for one single computer. If you've more to manage, look at dedicated software, or more complex solution as in http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup I don't want to create images of the partitions because I might want to put the data onto a different drive or in a different configuration. (Like no /var or something.) With a separate backup of the MBR, you're free to restore it or not ;) But if you want to be able to adjust your partition tables, leave free space on the drive and take a look at LVM, very powerful and easy to use by now (there's a good tutorial on howtoforge with a debian VMWare virtual machine) If this makes sense then what commands would I want to use to do this correctly. Presumably it needs to tar up links, file system permissions, and everything else. Since the Quick Install guide uses You *must* keep permissions of your files, so if you use tar, use -p option (cf. man), as if you use cp, use -p option. Or is there more to it? Yep, that's it. Restore mbr, mkfs, mount, untar, sync(or umount), reboot I'm rambling here so I'll hope for a quick answer and then give it a try. Thanks in advance, Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Sun, 04 May 2008 12:21:47 +0200, Jil Larner wrote: You also ought to backup the full MBR, which is a good practice, so you can bring back your boot sector and the partition table. Backing it up if very painless, just a dd command, cf. http://gentoo-wiki.com/MBR . The MBR contains only the primary partitions. If you have an extended partition, you will need to use sfdisk to make a separate backup of the logical partition table. -- Neil Bothwick Crayons can take you more places than starships. * Guinan signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
Jil Neil, Thanks for the really great information! I'm going to give this a try today. It strikes me that to test my backup I could create a chroot on the very system I'm backing up. (Or some other system.) I follow the procedure we're outlining here using the install CD and when it's done I reboot the system, create a few small partitions in some extra disk space, untar the files, chroot into that environment, run some commands to test things, and then put the tar'ed files away for safe keeping feeling pretty good that everything is where I need it should the worst happen. Again, thanks for the info. I do appreciate it. Cheers, Mark On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 3:21 AM, Jil Larner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Mark, Mark Knecht a écrit : [...] happen I have a way to restore where I am today. Since the disk usage is currently about 4GB it seems like a great time to do it. Is this possible? I think it's essentially what the stage 3 file is that I use when I install, isn't it? If you don't export stage3 and /usr/portage/ files, your backup will be lighter. The portage tree shouldn't be backed up because it shall be outdated when you'll restore, and emerge --sync will bring it back (except if you plan to restore in two weeks and have a low speed connection so you use emerge-delta-webrsync, but in that case you already know why you need to keep the tree). For stage3, you can safely discard it. Cf. exclude-dires in man tar From the running system here's what things look like right now: laptop1 ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 15820524 3641240 11375636 25% / udev 10240 172 10068 2% /dev /dev/sda6 1320272189304 1063900 16% /var /dev/sda7 10278304312012 9444184 4% /home shm1003844 0 1003844 0% /dev/shm laptop1 ~ # Tip: use df -h and put it as an alias (alias df='df -h' in .bashrc) ;) My thought is to boot using the install CD, mount a USB drive at /mnt/gentoo, then create a mount point 'backup' on the USB drive to mount each of the 3 partitions I want to back up one at a time. ( /, /var and /home) Then I'll mount each partition by itself and use tar to create a single file for each partition where that file gets written on the USB drive. When I'm done I have 3 files. Thus, you would be able to restore only one partition if needed, and there is less chance that all your archive becomes corrupted. I would process the same way. You also ought to backup the full MBR, which is a good practice, so you can bring back your boot sector and the partition table. Backing it up if very painless, just a dd command, cf. http://gentoo-wiki.com/MBR . And it saves a *lot* of time when restoring (especially when there is @$#! vista partitions with more sectors than there is really on the disk...) Restore would be to create the partitions anew, untar, install grub from in the chroot, and reboot. So, restore would be a dd command for the MBR, and a mkfs on your partitions, then untar your backups. So you wouldn't even need to chroot Is this a reasonable way to go? Is there something easier? (That seems pretty easy to me...) It is reasonable, for one single computer. If you've more to manage, look at dedicated software, or more complex solution as in http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup I don't want to create images of the partitions because I might want to put the data onto a different drive or in a different configuration. (Like no /var or something.) With a separate backup of the MBR, you're free to restore it or not ;) But if you want to be able to adjust your partition tables, leave free space on the drive and take a look at LVM, very powerful and easy to use by now (there's a good tutorial on howtoforge with a debian VMWare virtual machine) If this makes sense then what commands would I want to use to do this correctly. Presumably it needs to tar up links, file system permissions, and everything else. Since the Quick Install guide uses You *must* keep permissions of your files, so if you use tar, use -p option (cf. man), as if you use cp, use -p option. Or is there more to it? Yep, that's it. Restore mbr, mkfs, mount, untar, sync(or umount), reboot I'm rambling here so I'll hope for a quick answer and then give it a try. Thanks in advance, Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jil Neil, Thanks for the really great information! I'm going to give this a try today. It strikes me that to test my backup I could create a chroot on the very system I'm backing up. (Or some other system.) I follow the procedure we're outlining here using the install CD and when it's done I reboot the system, create a few small partitions in some extra disk space, untar the files, chroot into that environment, run some commands to test things, and then put the tar'ed files away for safe keeping feeling pretty good that everything is where I need it should the worst happen. Again, thanks for the info. I do appreciate it. Cheers, Mark Hi all, So I'm working on this and ran into a couple of questions about tar. 1) I'm having trouble figuring how to best run tar. I end up with files at the wrong level every time so far. Assume I first mount a partition that's empty, and then mount a partition I want to save that contains a number of system directories - /, tmp, etc. lib, mnt and others: mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/gentoo [[ This is empty except for a mount point called TarPoint ]] cd /mnt/gentoo mount /dev/sda5 TarPoint [[ The partition I want to backup ]] Now I can see all my directories under TarPoint. What's the best way to run tar, creating a file called SYSTEM.tar.bz2 in /mnt/gentoo, so that later, when I have an empty partition on a different hard drive (hda) where I'm going to restore the system, I can do this mount /dev/hda11 /mnt/gentoo cd /mnt/gentoo scp [EMAIL PROTECTED]:SYSTEM.tar.bz2 . tar xvfp SYSTEM.tar.bz2 and I get the system directory hierarchy back again. 2) This laptop is a dual boot machine so the system clock is set to local when I'm in my Gentoo environment. When I drop into the install CD I presume it's set to UTC as is the standard. My question has to do with any requirements to setting time prior to making the tar ball or untarring to build the environment. What I'm seeing is that the command tar xcjf SYSTEM.tar.bz2 generates lots of messages about file times being in the future. Maybe this won't matter if I use the backup later than 8 hours from the time I make it but in the short term will it cause any problems? Thanks, Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7:12 PM, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jil Neil, Thanks for the really great information! I'm going to give this a try today. It strikes me that to test my backup I could create a chroot on the very system I'm backing up. (Or some other system.) I follow the procedure we're outlining here using the install CD and when it's done I reboot the system, create a few small partitions in some extra disk space, untar the files, chroot into that environment, run some commands to test things, and then put the tar'ed files away for safe keeping feeling pretty good that everything is where I need it should the worst happen. Again, thanks for the info. I do appreciate it. Cheers, Mark Hi all, So I'm working on this and ran into a couple of questions about tar. 1) I'm having trouble figuring how to best run tar. I end up with files at the wrong level every time so far. Assume I first mount a partition that's empty, and then mount a partition I want to save that contains a number of system directories - /, tmp, etc. lib, mnt and others: mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/gentoo [[ This is empty except for a mount point called TarPoint ]] cd /mnt/gentoo mount /dev/sda5 TarPoint [[ The partition I want to backup ]] Now I can see all my directories under TarPoint. What's the best way to run tar, creating a file called SYSTEM.tar.bz2 in /mnt/gentoo, so that later, when I have an empty partition on a different hard drive (hda) where I'm going to restore the system, I can do this mount /dev/hda11 /mnt/gentoo cd /mnt/gentoo scp [EMAIL PROTECTED]:SYSTEM.tar.bz2 . tar xvfp SYSTEM.tar.bz2 and I get the system directory hierarchy back again. 2) This laptop is a dual boot machine so the system clock is set to local when I'm in my Gentoo environment. When I drop into the install CD I presume it's set to UTC as is the standard. My question has to do with any requirements to setting time prior to making the tar ball or untarring to build the environment. What I'm seeing is that the command tar xcjf SYSTEM.tar.bz2 generates lots of messages about file times being in the future. Maybe this won't matter if I use the backup later than 8 hours from the time I make it but in the short term will it cause any problems? Thanks, Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list Look into what's called a stage 4 backup: http://blinkeye.ch/mediawiki/index.php/GNU/Linux_System_Backup_Script_(stage4) I've had to actually use it once, and it worked fine. It already excludes the appropriate files: /dev /lost+found /mnt /proc /sys /tmp /usr/portage /usr/src /var/log /var/tmp /var/db /var/cache/edb It doesn't back up the MBR or the partition tables (primary or logical), though you could edit the script to do that. -- - Mark Shields
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Mark Shields [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Look into what's called a stage 4 backup: http://blinkeye.ch/mediawiki/index.php/GNU/Linux_System_Backup_Script_(stage4) I've had to actually use it once, and it worked fine. It already excludes the appropriate files: /dev /lost+found /mnt /proc /sys /tmp /usr/portage /usr/src /var/log /var/tmp /var/db /var/cache/edb It doesn't back up the MBR or the partition tables (primary or logical), though you could edit the script to do that. -- - Mark Shields Thanks Mark. That looks interesting. I'm not clear about the process of actually making the backup. This get run on a live file system? I suppose the things it excludes if it does are the things that might be changing? - Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Mark Shields [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Look into what's called a stage 4 backup: http://blinkeye.ch/mediawiki/index.php/GNU/Linux_System_Backup_Script_(stage4) I've had to actually use it once, and it worked fine. It already excludes the appropriate files: /dev /lost+found /mnt /proc /sys /tmp /usr/portage /usr/src /var/log /var/tmp /var/db /var/cache/edb It doesn't back up the MBR or the partition tables (primary or logical), though you could edit the script to do that. -- - Mark Shields Thanks Mark. That looks interesting. I'm not clear about the process of actually making the backup. This get run on a live file system? I suppose the things it excludes if it does are the things that might be changing? - Mark So I tried this out. Although I had a couple of directory issues getting it ready to go it did run eventually. My issue at this point is a matter of gaining confidence that it backed up the right stuff. Considering my file system usage the file size seems smallish at 1.2G. lightning ~ # df -h FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 9.2G 6.5G 2.3G 75% / udev 10M 184K 9.9M 2% /dev /dev/sda6 3.7G 740M 2.8G 21% /usr/src /dev/sda8 14G 11G 2.5G 82% /home shm 497M 0 497M 0% /dev/shm none 497M 0 497M 0% /tmp/jack lightning ~ # The terminal where it ran said it backed up about 3.3GB into a 1.2GB file. My file system usage (for a minimal backup) is roughly the 6.5GB on / since minimal doesn't back up /home and /usr/src which I convieniently have on separate partitions anyway. I wonder if half of that 6.6GB really isn't needed? Anyway, the scripts seemed to have worked, but how to verify? That's the question. Could I restore this backup into a different subdirectory somewhere and then chroot into it? - Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 04:12:08PM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: 1) I'm having trouble figuring how to best run tar. I end up with files at the wrong level every time so far. Assume I first mount a partition that's empty, and then mount a partition I want to save that contains a number of system directories - /, tmp, etc. lib, mnt and others: mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/gentoo [[ This is empty except for a mount point called TarPoint ]] cd /mnt/gentoo mount /dev/sda5 TarPoint [[ The partition I want to backup ]] Now I can see all my directories under TarPoint. What's the best way to run tar, creating a file called SYSTEM.tar.bz2 in /mnt/gentoo, so that later, when I have an empty partition on a different hard drive (hda) where I'm going to restore the system, I can do this mount /dev/hda11 /mnt/gentoo cd /mnt/gentoo scp [EMAIL PROTECTED]:SYSTEM.tar.bz2 . tar xvfp SYSTEM.tar.bz2 To extract bzip2 files with tar, you need to add the j option. and I get the system directory hierarchy back again. 2) This laptop is a dual boot machine so the system clock is set to local when I'm in my Gentoo environment. When I drop into the install CD I presume it's set to UTC as is the standard. My question has to do with any requirements to setting time prior to making the tar ball or untarring to build the environment. What I'm seeing is that the command tar xcjf SYSTEM.tar.bz2 You have conflicting options there. To extract, use x. To create, use c. generates lots of messages about file times being in the future. Maybe this won't matter if I use the backup later than 8 hours from the time I make it but in the short term will it cause any problems? Any problems? Probably. They may be inconsequential though. Follow the instructions below for a possible solution to your problem. First, make sure your time is set correctly under UTC with the date command. For help with it, http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1chap=5 Then, you might try setting the TZ variable in the shell environment to the timezone in which the tar'ed files resided. Afterwards, untar the tarball. Not sure how this will work in an install environment. -- Ian Graeme Hilt ian.hilt (at) gmail.com GnuPG key: 0x4AFC1EE3 -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
[gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?
I've never done this before so it seems like right now would be a great time to learn. Thanks in advance. I've just done this installation on my laptop. For the most part it's working fine. Still a few things to iron out but it's good enough that I'd like to save the state of the machine so that should something happen I have a way to restore where I am today. Since the disk usage is currently about 4GB it seems like a great time to do it. Is this possible? I think it's essentially what the stage 3 file is that I use when I install, isn't it? If I can keep the whole thing under 5GB then I can write it on a DVD and I'm in a really safe space for a fast reinstall if something happens. From the running system here's what things look like right now: laptop1 ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 15820524 3641240 11375636 25% / udev 10240 172 10068 2% /dev /dev/sda6 1320272189304 1063900 16% /var /dev/sda7 10278304312012 9444184 4% /home shm1003844 0 1003844 0% /dev/shm laptop1 ~ # My thought is to boot using the install CD, mount a USB drive at /mnt/gentoo, then create a mount point 'backup' on the USB drive to mount each of the 3 partitions I want to back up one at a time. ( /, /var and /home) Then I'll mount each partition by itself and use tar to create a single file for each partition where that file gets written on the USB drive. When I'm done I have 3 files. Restore would be to create the partitions anew, untar, install grub from in the chroot, and reboot. Is this a reasonable way to go? Is there something easier? (That seems pretty easy to me...) I don't want to create images of the partitions because I might want to put the data onto a different drive or in a different configuration. (Like no /var or something.) If this makes sense then what commands would I want to use to do this correctly. Presumably it needs to tar up links, file system permissions, and everything else. Since the Quick Install guide uses tar xjpf stage3* to extract the main directories files, and assuming the USB drive is sdb1, would I just use mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/gentoo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/gentoo/backup tar cjfp ./ROOT.tar.bz2 backup and then repeat for the other two partitions? Or is there more to it? I'm rambling here so I'll hope for a quick answer and then give it a try. Thanks in advance, Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
