I wasn't aware of dump/restore. I need to research that option. It seems like it is Red Hat utility not easily available for Intrepid. An Ubuntu GUI application called 'sbackup' is recommended instead. I need to research sbackup and see if it can sidestep the UUID mismatch that plagued my tar / backups.
I wonder if putting the /boot directory on its own partition might help. I could dd that one tiny partition to avoid the UUID mismatch. The / and /home partitions could be backed up any old way. Is there any minimum size limit for a Linux or Intrepid partition? As for the dd requirement of an exactly partition match, until I gain proficiency in Linux I will only experiment on one machine. Unlike WindowsXP, Intrepid Linux seems exceeding stable if I don't screw with it. So I can use it on other machines that don't see drastic changes. However I must screw with Linux to learn how it works and how to fix what I (or eventually others) may break. So one desktop machine is dedicated to nothing but learning about Linux and I probably won't need to change the disks as they are new. Stability is one reason I migrated to Linux. I can live with having to fix problems I create in Linux in the learning process. I dislike Windows problems like registry artifacts that hang around and grow from old removed applications and other reasons. Backing up a Windows install usually requires an extra piece of software like Ghost. I'd rather have an OS that provides all the tools I need. Plus I detest Microsoft's heavy handed and intrusive software validation process. Windows 2k was very stable and didn't have the validation regime. I was happy with Win 2k but every release since has gotten less reliable more expensive and more intrusive and chased me to Linux. Thanks, Word Wizard On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 18:36 -0700, Joe Pruett wrote: > i haven't followed this entire thread, but i have to say that dd is only a > useful backup strategy if you will use exactly the same hard disk to > restore onto. using one of a different size or geometry can lead to > trouble if the new disk partition isn't sized correctly. it has to be the > same number of sectors or larger, and if larger it won't use the extra > space without resizing the filesystem which is another scary operation. > > have you looked at dump/restore? they produce output that can be stored > on disk or tape. you can also do interactive restores from their images > (a mini shell like environment where you can cd and ls and choose files). > > those dump images aren't something that you can just restore and reboot > from. you need to boot into some minimal system (live/rescue cd) and then > repartition/reformat/restore. > > if you want a bootable bare metal restore, there are some tools out there > that can create bootable cd/dvd disks, but i have never used them. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
