I've actually done this a few times, there are several tools available to you depending on your exact needs. Look into Mondoarchive http://www.mondorescue.org, partimage http://www.partimage.org, and clonesys http://www.trickytools.com/php/clonesys.php
I personally used partimage, but it took a bit of fighting to get it to deal with soft-raid and LVM, but I got it done. Mondo used to work well for me, but I fought with it for a week and got no where. I of course found clonesys after the fact, so I cant offer an opinion on it.
Matt
On 8/1/06, djgoku [email protected] wrote:
On 8/1/06, Jack [email protected] wrote:
Well, I've done it again.
My /var partition went south today on my server. I couldn't find my backup media. It wasn't a full backup anyway. For some reason that partition kept my system from booting. Not sure what's going on there, unless I had a link from /usr to /var (a very real possibility).
Anyway! I've just bought a DVD+RW writer for the server. The goal is to make a complete backup of the system onto a DVD, that can be used to rebuild the system.
Question 1: Is it possible to 'dd' directly onto a DVD medium, so that it could be 'dd'ed back onto a new HD?
You could boot to a LiveCD and if you have a spare HD dd if=/dev/device of=/dev/difdevice.iso, then burn to DVD or CD. You could also tar the directorys you want to save and reinstall. I don't know what OS you are using, but most all my changes on my OpenBSD systems are in /etc, /home, and for the exception of my webserver /var/www/. So for me I just tar /etc /home and /var and reinstall in an event of a problem. Doesn't really take to long to have a fully working server/workstation for me, you mileage may vary.
Question 2: How would one best copy the entire file structure onto a dvd to make it a bootable media, so that it could be used as a boot device?
Answers must be suitable for a CLI only system as this is a server and has no X.
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