On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7:12 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jil & Neil,
> >    Thanks for the really great information! I'm going to give this a try
> today.
> >
> >    It strikes me that to test my backup I could create a chroot on the
> >  very system I'm backing up. (Or some other system.) I follow the
> >  procedure we're outlining here using the install CD and when it's done
> >  I reboot the system, create a few small partitions in some extra disk
> >  space, untar the files, chroot into that environment, run some
> >  commands to test things, and then put the tar'ed files away for safe
> >  keeping feeling pretty good that everything is where I need it should
> >  the worst happen.
> >
> >    Again, thanks for the info. I do appreciate it.
> >
> >  Cheers,
> >  Mark
> >
>
> Hi all,
>   So I'm working on this and ran into a couple of questions about tar.
>
> 1) I'm having trouble figuring how to best run tar. I end up with
> files at the wrong level every time so far.
>
> Assume I first mount a partition that's empty, and then mount a
> partition I want to save that contains a number of system directories
> - /, tmp, etc. lib, mnt and others:
>
> mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/gentoo      [[ This is empty except for a mount
> point called TarPoint ]]
> cd /mnt/gentoo
> mount /dev/sda5 TarPoint   [[ The partition I want to backup ]]
>
> Now I can see all my directories under TarPoint. What's the best way
> to run tar, creating a file called SYSTEM.tar.bz2 in /mnt/gentoo, so
> that later, when I have an empty partition on a different hard drive
> (hda) where I'm going to restore the system, I can do this
>
> mount /dev/hda11 /mnt/gentoo
> cd /mnt/gentoo
> scp mark@server:SYSTEM.tar.bz2 .
> tar xvfp SYSTEM.tar.bz2
>
> and I get the system directory hierarchy back again.
>
> 2) This laptop is a dual boot machine so the system clock is set to
> local when I'm in my Gentoo environment. When I drop into the install
> CD I presume it's set to UTC as is the standard. My question has to do
> with any requirements to setting time prior to making the tar ball or
> untarring to build the environment.
>
> What I'm seeing is that the command
>
> tar xcjf SYSTEM.tar.bz2
>
> generates lots of messages about file times being in the future. Maybe
> this won't matter if I use the backup later than 8 hours from the time
> I make it but in the short term will it cause any problems?
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
> --
> gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
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