Arch Linux

Spelchek

Member

Registered: 2009-01-27

Posts: 22

Backing up my installation

What would be the best way to back up my Arch install so that if something goes wrong I can revert back to the previous state or reinstall it with all of the packages and settings that I have now?

SkonesMickLoud

Arch Linux f@h Team Member

From: The D of C

Registered: 2008-09-20

Posts: 178

Re: Backing up my installation

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_programs

perbh

Member

From: Republic of Texas

Registered: 2005-03-04

Posts: 765

Re: Backing up my installation

- or ...
Boot from a live cd (my personal preference is 'grml'), mount your root partition (and whatever other partitions you use that are part of the OS - like /var /home etc) and use a usb-drive for backups - I would just use a tarball,
ie something like this:

zsh# mkdir /arch
zsh# mount /dev/sda3 /arch       # obviously sda3 (and sda5 below) are just examples
zsh# mount /dev/sda5 /arch/var
zsh# mkdir /usb
zsh# mount /dev/sdb1 /usb
zsh# cd /arch
zsh# tar cvjf /usb/archlinux-yyyymmdd.tar.bz2 .  # might be handy to have the date in the tarball name

It might also be useful to clear the cache first - its a resource hog.
ie before you boot off a live cd, do a 'pacman -Scc'

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,896

Website

Re: Backing up my installation

I use Grysnc mostly backup /home /media

or course you can use it to backup /etc and pacman cache

my 2c

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Mr Green

whompus

Member

From: Durham. UK

Registered: 2005-08-09

Posts: 256

Re: Backing up my installation

I use the GNU/Linux System Backup Script (stage4)

http://blinkeye.ch/mediawiki/index.php/ … t_(stage4)

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Backing up my installation

If you have enough free space on a spare disk then just dd the whole drive to the backup disk. If you don't compress it you can even mount the partitions inside the image to get any file you want ... very neat but .... requires _lots_ of space.

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R00KIE
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