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system saved on mandrake?


jeanrev
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Hi all,

the first thing a newbie (me) will look for

after weeks spent to configure his system, is the way to reinstall it in case of new problems

so my question is :

which system is the best to save the system partitions ? in my case I have (/) & (/home )

 

is it partimage or mondorescue to be used ?

is it common to have a system or data saveguard on Linux ?

 

thanks

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

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In /home all your user settings and data is located.

 

In / are all the program files.

 

So if you want to start with a clean Linux install you would want to keep /home and format /. (disclaimer: this is the 'standard' way. I don't know where you keep your docs and movies. If you have saved them to /usr/lib this doesn't apply :D )

 

Partimage you don't need. Mandrake let's you choose wich partition to format during an install. Just don't choose to format /home.

 

It's always a good idea to have a backup.

 

Good luck.

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do a backup from mdk control center on you user files and system data files.

save the backup in another partition /backup if you can make one or /home.

If you put the backups in other partition then / every time you need to reinstall/scratch you can safely format your original / and still have your vital data saved. A simple restore should put you back in linux business.

I must ask the high level users:

if you restore, your permissions to the files are kept right ?

one only need to recreate the same users

or create a new one and chown?

Or ?

 

good day

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my backup method is sorta of the dirty way, but it works just fine for me. this is only good if you have an empty partition with enough space (which i do). you won't need any special tools/apps for this, either.

 

on a semi regular basis (like every 2 weeks, to once a month, depending on how many changes i've made to things) i just simply copy my /etc, /boot, & /home directories to an empty partition, lock stock & barrel. if you use KDE, you can do this very easily in GUI mode by opening Konqueror as superuser, right click the desired directory, copy, paste. simple as that. you can also do it via the command line with the cp command, should you so desire.

 

one caveat to this method........... by doing this via this method, all your /home files & directories will be owned by root in the backup (copy) you make. to remedy that you can just right click the backed up directory (again using Konqueror in superuser mode)->properties->permissions & change them all back to the original user. if you want to avoid this, you can back up the directory from command line as a .tar file using the following switches............... tar -cvfPpz /home/chris --directory=/mnt/temp3.

 

which means i'm saving my /home/chris directory to my /mnt/temp3 partition, creating/preserving permissions & abolute paths, using gzip compression. IE: all permissions will be preserved & you can simply untar the file as is, if needed.

 

Chris

Edited by chris z
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my take on partimage (& other back up type apps) versus methods mentioned above are this.......

 

due to the nature of Linux systems, the amount of apps you get for free with the discs, & the fact that all personal settings are kept safely in /home, a commercial back up app is not as much a neccessity as it is for a Windows install.

 

with Windows, if you hose your system & have to reinstall, you're going to also have to reinstall everything else you ever installed. all add-on (third party) apps, programs, etc., since a Windows install will only give you the stuff on a Windows install disc.............. IE: Windows. you dodn't get any CD burning software, office suite, graphics editor, firewall, mp3 player, games (except for the silly MS games), add on browsers & mail clients, etc., etc. so after a Windows install, you're going to have to go out & (worst case) find all those apps all over again, re-download/re-install them, & set them up. best case, you have all the CD's handy & you can skip the search for & download part & just take the time to reinstall & set up each one.

 

with Linux, if you just preserve your /home (& /etc is a good idea, too) you can do a complete reinstall in no time, your /home will have all your personal & various app settings in it, you can grab needed config info from /etc, & you're off & running in no time. to get a Windows system back to it's original state can takes days, a Linux system hours.

 

the only caveat here, & the one benefit of using something like partimage, is it will save your butt if you have a catastrophic hard drive failure, in which case anything you backed up on any partition will likely be lost. but........... the normal /etc directory will easily fit on a CD-R(W), & so will /home without the tons of movies, mp3's, etc. that you might keep on it. so you can burn the crucial info from /home to 1 CD, & save your music, vids, etc. to another CD.

 

in a nutshell, what partimage (& others like it) will do for you is........

 

benefits.....give you a sector by sector, complete image of your hardrive in it's current state, so a reinstall of the backup will leave you EXACTLY where you left off & save you should your computer become unbootable & all hard drive data is lost. no need to set up/tweak/reinstall anything. it's all there on the back up.

 

downside......backups with this method should ideally be done from a bootable backup CD (though they can be done on a live system, but it's not recommended for a PURE backup). the backup will take sevral hours of time to accomplish & several CD's as backup medium. a reinstall will also take several hours. and, no matter what the product claims, it still isn't 100% guaranteed to work (due to user error, bad backup medium, program malfunction, etc.).

 

there is nothing wrong with partimage, et. al. if that's the backup route you want to go, then by all means do it. it's just that it's not entirely neccessary to use something like that for backups in Linux, IMHO.

 

Chris

Edited by chris z
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