Re: [gentoo-user] tar a brand new Gentoo install to a USB drive for safe keeping?

["Mark Knecht" <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Mark Shields <laebshade@gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > Look into what's called a "stage 4 backup":
>  > http://blinkeye.ch/mediawiki/index.php/GNU/Linux_System_Backup_Script_(stage4)
>  >
>  > I've had to actually use it once, and it worked fine.  It already excludes
>  > the appropriate files:
>  >
>  > /dev
>  > /lost+found
>  > /mnt
>  > /proc
>  > /sys
>  > /tmp
>  > /usr/portage
>  > /usr/src
>  > /var/log
>  > /var/tmp
>  >
>  > /var/db
>  > /var/cache/edb
>  >
>  > It doesn't back up the MBR or the partition tables (primary or logical),
>  > though you could edit the script to do that.
>  >
>  > --
>  > - Mark Shields
>
>  Thanks Mark. That looks interesting.
>
>  I'm not clear about the process of actually making the backup. This
>  get run on a live file system? I suppose the things it excludes if it
>  does are the things that might be changing?
>
>  - Mark
>

So I tried this out. Although I had a couple of directory issues
getting it ready to go it did run eventually.

My issue at this point is a matter of gaining confidence that it
backed up the right stuff. Considering my file system usage the file
size seems smallish at 1.2G.

lightning ~ # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             9.2G  6.5G  2.3G  75% /
udev                   10M  184K  9.9M   2% /dev
/dev/sda6             3.7G  740M  2.8G  21% /usr/src
/dev/sda8              14G   11G  2.5G  82% /home
shm                   497M     0  497M   0% /dev/shm
none                  497M     0  497M   0% /tmp/jack
lightning ~ #

The terminal where it ran said it backed up about 3.3GB into a 1.2GB
file. My file system usage (for a minimal backup) is roughly the 6.5GB
on / since minimal doesn't back up /home and /usr/src which I
convieniently have on separate partitions anyway. I wonder if half of
that 6.6GB really isn't needed?

Anyway, the scripts seemed to have worked, but how to verify? That's
the question.

Could I restore this backup into a different subdirectory somewhere
and then chroot into it?

- Mark
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list