You are not logged in.

#1 2008-10-10 15:08:14

flowheat
Member
From: Pittsburgh, PA
Registered: 2008-09-23
Posts: 94

[SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

I've always enjoyed trying out the most bleeding edge technologies which is what brought me from debian based distros to Arch in the first place.  When I used to use things like Debian Sid and ran into problems I always seemed to find a way to fix them and get back to a stable installation.  However, when I enable the testing repo in arch I've managed to destroy my system pretty quickly.  That's not the problem though( Actually I like that).  The problem is then I have to do a fresh install every time. 

I've always kept a separate home partition and back it up before I do any updates or tinkering so my data and most of my preferences never get lost, but I'm looking for more of a full system backup of the whole OS.  I was searching the forums and Google for a complete backup solution and found a ton of options but nothing looked to be exactly what I'm looking for.

What I'm looking for is a livecd(I would imagine a livecd is easier since then you're not trying to backup the partition you're running from) of some sort that I can boot into and then make a backup cd/dvd snapshot of my current system.  I'd also like it if the image it creates is then installable.  I found Acronis TrueImage and it seems to be what I'm looking for but it appears to require a Windows Installation to run it from which I don't have, and really I'd rather find a FOSS solution anyway.  The wiki points to a tool called Mondo Rescue which also appears like it could do the trick, but I had a hard time finding a rescue cd that included it and also found a few bad reviews through Google.

If anyone knows of anything that can accomplish this I would appreciate the heads up.

Last edited by flowheat (2008-10-15 14:58:34)

Offline

#2 2008-10-10 15:29:08

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: [SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

I would suggest using any live linux, with added backup software of your choice. For instance arch-live (based on arch http://arch-live.blogspot.com/) or slax (based on slackware and live scripts http://www.slax.org/). Both of these have a relatively easy way to add packages of your choice (from respective distros).

For backups, it really depends how you want to backup. For the whole partitions, there's for instance partimage (in the community repo).

EDIT: forgot to say, both of the livecds mentioned above have an option to boot to memory, so that you can use the free space on the cd for the backup.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-10-10 15:31:24)

Offline

#3 2008-10-10 15:33:34

dschrute
Member
From: NJ, USA
Registered: 2007-04-09
Posts: 183

Re: [SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

G4L - http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l may do what you want.  It's a bootable CD that creates an image of your harddrive(s) or partitions.  The images may be compressed, and can be saved to either a 2nd local drive or over the network to a ftp server.  You can also simply clone drives/partitions, rather than creating images.
I use it at work to deploy machines from clean images, and at home to backup my existing machines to a big USB drive.

Offline

#4 2008-10-10 16:40:52

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: [SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

G4L seems pretty good. It's even included in my favorite rescue distro: RIPLinuX

Offline

#5 2008-10-10 16:54:39

pyther
Member
Registered: 2008-01-21
Posts: 1,395
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

Any reason not to just tar up / ? As this seems to be the best backup method. After you extract / you just need to chroot and run grub-install...


Website - Blog - arch-home
Arch User since March 2005

Offline

#6 2008-10-15 14:58:06

flowheat
Member
From: Pittsburgh, PA
Registered: 2008-09-23
Posts: 94

Re: [SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I found what I was looking for in Clonezilla ->  http://www.clonezilla.org.

It really just helps to automate the partimage process but can also use ntfsclone, partclone, and dd.

I also did the tar trick as backup to the backup.

Offline

#7 2008-10-16 01:44:36

arkay
Member
Registered: 2008-05-23
Posts: 79

Re: [SOLVED] Create complete system image as backup

While on this topic does anyone know of any tools that can do this successfully with the partition mounted and OS booted?  That way it could be an automated weekly image for instance.

Acronis trueumage for Linux is able to do this but I've never been able to get snapapi compiled under Arch.

From what I can gather the snapapi is a method by which in use files can be snapshotted and added to the backup hence the online nature of the backup.

Any info would be much appreciated as having to boot a liveCD for image backup seems a little arcane to me smile

Cheers,

Arkay.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB