On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 19:32 +1200, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: > On Mon 09 May 2011 11:49:09 NZST +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > > http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ > > Ugggh. This is just stupid, unless I'm missing something basic here. > > Boot any system rescue CD of your choice, start network interface, mount > local disks, start copying. Stick it in a script. > > If you're concerned with backing up the partition table, run fdisk -l, or > any such output from cfdisk or sfdisk that produces an output format that > can also be used again as input by the same program. > > Even better, stay with your idea of using rsync from runlevel 1, and do a > file copy. There is precious little need for disk image backup under Linux > (this is basically for 'dozers). > > There was a program based on rsync which did incremental backups by creating > hardlinks on the destination for unchanged content, but I forget the name > right now... rsnapshot. snapback is one I've used along these lines. Not best, as the number of links can easily becone quite huge. > > Look closely at rsync --link-dest > > Examine you backup needs and which files you really need. You probably find > that changing to runlevel 1 is not needed. If you want to back up loads of > open binary files belonging to a database it's much smarter to use the > hot-dump facility of the database engine instead. > > Volker > Runlevels are screwed in debianland... everything multiuser runs at level 2, so 5 doesn't mean the same over here.
As Volker implies, the only 100% safe method is to have quiescent disks, and that means booting off alternate media - usb stick or CD/DVD, and then you can clone in any manner you wish - dd upwards. Another alternative is to use mirrored disks, and regularly shut services down, break the mirror, fsck and then dupe the broken disk. System can be resilvered on completion. Not perfect, but close. I wouldn't bother doing a clone like this at a file level, unless the clone partitions are a different size.. Just automate the whole process with a simple script, and run it overnight. Steve. -- Steve Holdoway <[email protected]> http://www.greengecko.co.nz MSN: [email protected] Skype: sholdowa _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
