Easiest way to backup an entire gentoo system ?

[Jerem]

Well i have a Gentoo Linux system running on my /dev/hda and i also have a storage hard drive on /dev/sda. My question is :

running a knoppix, how can I backup my system, which is split amongst several partitions, as follows :

/dev/hda1 ==> DELL bios diagnostic stuff : critical thing : must be untouched
/dev/hda2 ==> Kro$oft's XP
/dev/hda3 ==> ext3 FS, mounted on /home
/dev/hda4 ==> the extended partition that stores following
/dev/hda5 ==> /boot ext2 FS
/dev/hda6 ==> swap (of course i dont want to backup this)
/dev/hda7 ==> my / with reiserFS

I have latest Gentoo and Knoppix livecd.

[zieloo]

Do a tar(.gz) image? Many 'backupers' are available now...

[adsmith]

What is the purpose of the backup?

If you want one monolithic everything backup, then just do something like

[John-Boy]

Dar

[Bob P]

i'm going to take the complete opposite approach to adsmith, and say that rotating incremental backups are a good idea, especially for your /home folders where data files are stored. the only people who make fun of people who do backups are, obviously, people who have never suffered from lack of a good backup.

as far as backups of the system files go, i would not trivialize the need for a good system backup either. i guess if you're relying on a stage 3 installation with nothing that's been very customized, limiting your backup to /etc and planning on a reinstall is a viable option. OTOH, if you've done a Stage 1 installation and you've got a highly customized system, you're going to be SOL if your system files are lost. a full Stage 1 install of Gentoo, X, a bloaty Desktop Environment like Gnome or KDE, and tweaking all of your custom settings could probalby take a week of workdays. who has time for that?

in comparison, well-designed backups that run as cron jobs can happen silently in the background and nobody ever notices they're happening.

for me, choosing between the two options is a no-brainer.
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[adsmith]

Actually, I thought I was strongly advocating incremental backups. I just think backing up /var /bin and so on is silly. Sorry if I wasn't clear. Backups are CRUCIAL.

A few friends and I, across the country, all rsync (via ssh) our $HOME's to each other's machine every night, as well as making local backups in our own home networks to spare drives. Even if two houses burn down, we still haven't lost anything really important. Sort of like a giant, slow RAID.

Some things, though, are easier to rebuild than to restore. I guess each person has to decide for himself where that tradeoff balances.

[Bob P]

[bin_streamer]

Is there a way to tar backups of your system so that you can move it over multiple partitions? and then point to it with grub/lilo?
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Computers are like AirConditioners .... They Stop Working Properly as soon as windows opens

[John-Boy]

As I posted above - Dar, it's in Portage. I'm a fan

[Hauser]

This is how I backup the entire system:https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=1563796#1563796
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AMD Athlon XP 2600+; 512M RAM;
nVidia FX5700LE; Hitachi 120Gb
2.6.9-nitro4, reiser4, linux26-headers+nptl

Do I like to compile everything?
Positive definite!

[gamezfreak]

Help!

I tried to create a backup tar using this command

tar -cvjpf --exclude=backup / /backup/backup.tar

and it created a file called '--exclude=backup' in /

now I can't delete it with rm, because --exclude=backup is an unrecognized option.

Any suggestions how to delete it? Also what should the proper command be to exclude the backup directory?

Thanks

[racoontje]

dd if=/dev/sda | tar something

[Jake]

[gamezfreak]

thanks jake, that worked