On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Jos Vos wrote: > On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 09:16:15AM -0500, jlrcon@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > I recommend the old way of tar > > Tar has been around for a long time and just basically works. Your can set > > it up to run in the background at night > > and which nights of the week you want to run. > > > > tar cvf /dev/st0 /* will backup complete system to scsi dat tape drive > > tar xvf /dev/st0 will restore > > This is not gui, but it will run with no one logged in. > > Well, this is a highly oversimplified example. Some comments: > > - Do *not* use "/*" as it will also try to backup /proc etc. > > - Do use a bigger blocksize for efficient tape use. > > - I personally prefer "find ... -xdev -depth ... | cpio" for various > reasons. That's why I like mondo-archive. I just had to change hard disks. Mondo backed everything up to CDs (in my case. Tape is supported, and works), and made the CDs bootable. Then I swapped the drives, booted from the CD, followed the prompts to restore, rebooted to start my configuration of linux (as opposed to the minimal one that was on the CD) and my system was 100% restored. No hassle! It handled /proc , /dev and so on correctly. It correctly fdisk'ed my new drive and adjusted the size of the partitions (after asking me if it could automatically resize them for me, or if I wanted to resize them manually) since the new drive was slightly larger than the old one. No gui interface, but it does everything right! I never had to worry about my redhat CDs or updates. What a pleasure. Mark -- The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
