[SOLVED] Backup and Restore

SIGTERM · 2009-11-12 16:03:04

Hi all,

I've been using Arch for a while now, and recently I thought to myself: "I've put a lot of work into this."
Then it crossed my mind, how much time it would cost me to do it all again.

So my question is,
What's best way of backing up and restoring an entire partition?

Thanks in advance

Last edited by SIGTERM (2009-11-15 19:36:58)

fsckd · 2009-11-12 16:12:50

SIGTERM wrote:

What's best way of backing up and restoring an entire partition?

I don't know the best way but what I do periodically is keep tar.bz2 copies of my private files and copies of system configuration files that I have changed. I also backup my pacman cache with a list of packages I've installed generated using the following commands (lifted from somewhere in the wiki, I can not find it):

pacman -Qqe | grep -v "$(pacman -Qmq)" > pkglist

pacman -Qmq > pkglist.foreign

Hope that helps.

SIGTERM · 2009-11-12 16:26:14

Thanks a lot fsckd.

How exactly would you restore your files?

fsckd · 2009-11-12 16:40:53

I have not had the chance to try this, but I probably will test it one of these days: pacman -S $(cat pkglist). Since pkglist.foreign is mostly from AUR, I'd have to that by hand.

Mostly my system is geared towards preserving my project files. If an OS is hosed, I can use another machine and can take my time in restoration.

SIGTERM · 2009-11-12 16:51:44

Okay, but would you install Arch Linux just very basic and then put back your conf files and /home/<user>, and then install the packages?

fsckd · 2009-11-12 17:19:54

The pkglist file should be all of my packages except the ones I installed from AUR. I have more than one GNU/Linux setup on this machine alone. So I can restore just using pacman -r.

Ok, going back over what I have, it's not very robust. If you want to take the lazy way, you can just keep a tar.bz2 archive of your Arch. Another option is, to keep a tar.bz2 of a basic system and list the extra packages restoring as you questioned in post #5. You would still need another Linux system, either on a disk or live CD, but would not have to depend upon pacman.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-12 16:03:04

[SOLVED] Backup and Restore

#2 2009-11-12 16:12:50

Re: [SOLVED] Backup and Restore

#3 2009-11-12 16:26:14

Re: [SOLVED] Backup and Restore

#4 2009-11-12 16:40:53

Re: [SOLVED] Backup and Restore

#5 2009-11-12 16:51:44

Re: [SOLVED] Backup and Restore

#6 2009-11-12 17:19:54

Re: [SOLVED] Backup and Restore

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