Here's the note I just posted to the osx-admin list...
>>>>> "Randal" == Randal L Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Randal> I can't be the first person to want an incremental disk-level catastrophy
Randal> recovery backup solution under OSX.
Randal> What do the rest of you do? How do you deal with the broken
Randal> *mandatory* aliases on restore?
OK, here's what I've decided to do, and it appears to work fine.
I put OS9 on an HFS+ partition on my powerbook.
I put OSX on a UFS partition on my powerbook.
I have a small spare OS9 partition on my powerbook as well (just
enough space to boot).
To backup the big OS9 partition, I use Retrospect Duplicate on the OS9
partition to an HFS+ firewire partition. This does the whole thing
the first time, and only the parts that change each time following.
(There are a few dozen tools that do this for free, anyway.)
To backup the OSX partition, I use rsync to a different Firewire
partition:
sudo rsync -avx --exclude /var/vm/ / /Volumes/MyOSXbackup
This does the whole thing the first time, and only the parts that
change each time following. While it is mounted, I type "mount" to
get the /dev/disk1s9 number needed for the recovery (see below), and
note that.
Now, let's say I fizz my disk.
I install OS9 on my third spare partition, and boot. I mount my
firewire, and use the copy of Retrospect on there to duplicate the
backup to my main OS9 partition. Note that the aliases are hosed at
this point, but OS9 doesn't use them mission critical, so I don't
care. I'm used to that mess. :)
I boot off my OSX install disk, and install OSX onto my OSX partition,
with as little as I can get away with (I didn't try turning off bsd
yet, because I think I need it for rsync). When it gets to "reboot",
I reboot ** into single user mode ** (Command-S during boot).
Let it get to a prompt. unlock the root partition using the
proper mount command (mount -w / or something, whatever it says).
Now for the fun:
# mkdir /mnt
# mount /dev/disk1s9 /mnt --- this is where you need the disk number
# cd /mnt
# rsync -avx . --exclude /mnt/ /
go away for a few hours
# reboot
And *it works just fine*. Bingo bingo bingo. Yes yes yes.
"sudo rmdir /mnt" if you want, after you're up. No biggie if it just
sits there.
I'm happy. Cool. Life is good.
--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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