Arch Linux

B_Geminorum

Member

Registered: 2013-06-13

Posts: 5

Suggestion on backup. [SOLVED]

Dear sirs!

I've recently encountered a problem of destroying my Arch too often. I've got a bit tired of it so I decided to (finally!) make a backup copy.

As I went through wiki and similar posts I realized that there are quite a few solutions out there, but I am still not sure what to pick.

My situation is: sda1 = 50gb (13 in use ); sda3(home) = 400gb (about 200gb in use ); don't know if swap matters but it is 15gig on sda2.

My requirements in order of importance:
1) I want to be able to make a full system backup and be able to restore from command line or environment close to nothing in case if I destroy everything.
2) I want to be able to make snapshots of my current file system because i like experimenting with GUI settings which ruins it quite often as well. Which means that ability to restore from command line within environment would be nice to have. (If there is a GUI I don't mind )
3) The solution should comply with what I have.

What I have:
1) 320GB external HDD which is empty
2) 160GB external HDD with bootable Arch iso which is about 540mb

I was considering luckybackup, but I cannot find information if it is capable of full system backup.
Clonezilla at the other hand has some partition limitation.

Any advice will be strongly appreciated.

Last edited by B_Geminorum (2013-06-22 07:08:04)

Alber

Member

From: Spain - España

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 227

Re: Suggestion on backup. [SOLVED]

Hello

I like rsync. I don't know if it fits you. I'll say try and test if it fullfills your neededs and you feel comfortable.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fu … with_rsync
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Programs

---

Because not all of us are native English speakers, try no to use slang or abbreviations, thank you.

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: Suggestion on backup. [SOLVED]

I've recently encountered a problem of destroying my Arch too often.

My suggestion is to stop destroying your Arch!

I want to be able to make snapshots of my current file system because i like experimenting with GUI settings which ruins it quite often as well.

You don't need a backup to prevent this. Just create a new user called "mytester" and mess with whatever you want and delete him when you're done. If you installed packages you don't want anymore then just remove them (they're all logged in the pacman log file) or use a pacman wrapper with "rollback" support, such as aura. For a more technical but complicated solution to snapshots, please read about snapshots in BtrFS.

What backup method have you been using thus far?

B_Geminorum

Member

Registered: 2013-06-13

Posts: 5

Re: Suggestion on backup. [SOLVED]

Thank you so much guys for you help. I found mondo rescue which seem to fully fulfill my needs.

In Idea with a testuser is actually a nice solution too for a part of my problem.