Les Mikesell wrote:
: Dean S. Messing wrote:
: > craigni wrote:
: > <snip
: > : I'm getting enamored of rsync to the point where I think that's the
: > : backup strategy I'd like to use

<snip>

: I think the OP was looking for an easy way to do a complete restore,
: though.

`rsnapshot' and `dirvish' provide this, I think[1]. Otherwise these
backup systems would be pretty useless if one had a RAID0 array
failure and lost one's entire system.

The very first "snapshot" one takes is a copy of the system on a
single filesystem[2] (so that hardlinking will work).

Each backup thereafter creates the entire system dir structure again
within the same filesystem, except using hardlinks for stuff that's
remained the same since the last backup. The delta space increase is
therefore small.

If one needs to do a full restore, one merely runs `rsync' from latest
snapshot back onto the system disk, re-install the bootloader and
boot.

[1] Confession: I'm just getting this going for the first time so I've
not actually done a restore yet but that's the way it is supposed to
work.

[2] The "single filesystem" should be on a separate physical disk or
system which is not part of one's system RAID array or LVM structure.
You don't want to lose your backups if your system dies.

: One of the easiest would be to download the bootable iso for
: clonezilla live (http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/clonezilla-live)
: which will save compressed disk/partition images to local/nfs/smb/ssh
: locations and knows enough about linux and ntfs filesystems to only save
: the used portions. On restore, it will re-create the partions, copy back
: the contents and make the disk bootable for you.

This sounds nice. I'm not sure if either of the applications I
menioned remember the partition structure. One may have to do the
partitioning separately. It's good to save a copy of `fdisk -l' and
`vgdisplay -v' with each backup, I suppose.

Does clonezilla remember Logical Volume or Software Raid
info and re-create it too?

Dean

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Dean S. Messing wrote:

: I think the OP was looking for an easy way to do a complete restore,
: though.


`rsnapshot' and `dirvish' provide this, I think[1]. Otherwise these
backup systems would be pretty useless if one had a RAID0 array
failure and lost one's entire system.


I wouldn't call them useless. It is better than nothing even if you have
to do a base system install to get the replacement system to a point
where you can restore. And sometimes you may want to restore on a
different layout or just grab a copy of a file or directory that was
accidentally deleted. Backuppc provides a handy web interface for those
operations and will let you download a file or tar/zip archive of
multiple files through the browser.


: One of the easiest would be to download the bootable iso for
: clonezilla live (http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/clonezilla-live)
: which will save compressed disk/partition images to local/nfs/smb/ssh
: locations and knows enough about linux and ntfs filesystems to only save
: the used portions. On restore, it will re-create the partions, copy back
: the contents and make the disk bootable for you.


This sounds nice. I'm not sure if either of the applications I
menioned remember the partition structure. One may have to do the
partitioning separately. It's good to save a copy of `fdisk -l' and
`vgdisplay -v' with each backup, I suppose.


Does clonezilla remember Logical Volume or Software Raid
info and re-create it too?


It does handle LVM, but doesn't currently do raid. It is probably still
usable if you manually create the raid devices first and restore by
partitions instead of the whole disk. You can drop to a (debian live)
shell for certain steps if you know what you are doing.


--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@gmail.com

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