I glanced too quickly at that Montana State page... What I wanted wasn't there.
Look at the 'mount' Man page, specifically the section on "The Loop Device": https://linux.die.net/man/8/mount On Sat, Jan 5, 2019, 05:18 Tyrell Jentink <[email protected] wrote: > Your original question seemed to imply you wanted to maintain the > partition layout for some reason. If you do, disk images are the correct > way to do it... But, as others have said, you might not actually have meant > to ask for that... > > If what you want is the files, not the partitions, you can use 'cp -a,' or > even 'rsync -a'. > > IF you want the partitions, that's what a disk image is for. Disk images > are generally read only, but they are mountable. > > I have used disk images in a lot of ways... > Related to your use case, I have used disk images to create "Archives" of > machine states; In other words, I can use that image to restore my full > disk back to it's current system state. Or, I can simply mount the "Old" > system into my new file system and copy a file out if I need it. Those will > typically be treated as "Read Only," after all, it's an archive. > > I have also used disk images in virtual machines... They are really just > text files, mounted as loop devices and partitioned and formatted like a > block device... You can use them in any way you can use a block device, > including writing to it. > > Heck, I have entire services running in disk images that are shared over > iSCSI... I mean, complex scenarios can be constructed with these things. > > > The standard tool for taking a disk image is 'dd.' Man page: >> > http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/dd.1.html >> >> That's where I started ;/ >> > > Then you have what you need... > > > Theoretically, you can simply image the entire drive, partitions and all >> > intact exactly as they are presently, although I've never done it that >> > way... I have always imaged partitions directly... But I don't see why >> > either method would be "wrong," as long as you know how to mount the >> output >> > ;) >> >> That "Theoretically" is the kicker. >> > > Ugh... I'm sorry for dispensing doubt... I *HAVE* worked with full disk > images in the context of Virtual Machines. I have even started with a plain > text file, mounted it with a loop mount, and partitioned and formatted it. > They work. They work well. When I said "Theoretically," I meant "Make sure > you know how this works before you do it," not "Don't do it." > >> >> > >> > As for compressing it... >> > >> https://serverfault.com/questions/52260/compressing-dd-backup-on-the-fly >> > suggests you can simply pipe the output of 'dd' directly into gzip... >> But >> > one of the comments says not to use it for the purposes the original >> poster >> > suggested it for, so maybe read their warnings before following their >> > advice. >> >> I hadn't seen that particular article. But a similar one was what >> prompted me to post. >> >> I hoped there was a tool. As I intend to erase the hard drive in each >> machine before doing a fresh Debian install I NEED to have a copy in a >> safe place. I WANT it stored in such a manner that I can retrieve >> individual files/directories. >> > > Once you dd the image... You can mount the image. With 'mount -o' > command. This article appears to cover the ins and outs pretty well, > although I just glanced over it... > > http://www.cs.montana.edu/~andrew.hamilton/cs560/VFS/mount.html > > Don't know if what I want is actually possible. >> Don't know if there is something basic that I don't know. >> Thank you. >> >> >> > >> > On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, 06:08 Richard Owlett <[email protected] wrote: >> > >> >> I wish to do fresh Debian installs to three machines {including >> >> repartitioning drives of each machine}. Each drive is nominally 250GB. >> I >> >> have purchased a USB connected 1TB drive to be the target. >> >> >> >> I like the ease of use of Clonezilla-live. But it intrinsically wipes >> >> the target drive completely. Compressing the output would be nice. >> >> >> >> TIA >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> PLUG mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug >> > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
