Also if you are trying to tar up your whole system you shouldn't tar /proc or /sys since they aren't real directories. There may be other directories you want to omit, like stuff in /var, /tmp, it varies from distro to distro.
Also bear in mind some things can't be safely backed up at all without additional steps, like databases. I really like the book "Practical UNIX Internet and Security" for it's extensive discussion of backups and disaster recovery. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/puis/ On Dec 9, 2007 1:11 PM, Jeff Laughlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > AFAIK there is nothing exactly like Ghost for Linux, at least not yet. > Last I checked there were some alpha projects. They could me more > mature by now... > > The dd command can copy an entire hard drive or a single partition > byte for byte. It's not as flexable as ghost however. It knows nothing > about the size or partitioning of the hard drive and will also copy > all of the empty blocks, so you can only restore a dd image to a > drive/partition of the same or larger size, and if it's larger you > will not be able to access the extra space. > > dd if=/dev/hda of=hdaimage bs=10M > > This will create an image of the entire hda drive including all > partitions in the file hdaimage in the current directory (don't create > this file on hda obviously). The bs makes dd copy 10 meg chunks at a > time, greatly speeding up the copy. > > dd if=/dev/hda1 of=hda1image bs=10M > > This will create an image of just the first partition on hda. man dd > for more info. > > Tar works perfectly for copying a single partition. It captures all of > the file system metadata. If you are using SE Linux you need to make > sure you are using a version of Tar that captures SE Linux info and > you may need to pass a command line switch to turn it on. Of course if > you are trying to restore a system from tarballs you will have to > partition and format by hand first and then restore each tarball for > each partition. > > I'm confused about tarring /dev. It used to be that /dev was a normal > folder with normal files. Then came devfs and now udev. I think some > of the files in /dev are created at boot by the kernel and maybe some > are real or something, I'm not sure. > > > On Dec 9, 2007 12:24 PM, Doug <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is there a way to clone or ghost a Linux hard drive?? > > > > Doug VE5DA > > > > > > - > > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-hams" in > > the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > > > > > > -- > 73 de n1ywb > -- 73 de n1ywb - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-hams" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
