[vox-tech] simple backup and restore

[Jay Strauss]

Tim Riley wrote:
> 
> Jay Strauss wrote:
> 
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>I just want to do a simple backup, write the backup file to the system
>>disk or an NFS mount.  Then restore from that file.
>>
>>I'm not sure what I should backup.  I figure I can exclude: /tmp /dev
>>/mnt /proc
>>
>>If I do:
>>
>>cd /
>>tar zcvf backup.tar.gz bin boot etc home initrd initrd.img lib media opt
>>root sbin  srv  sys  usr  var  vmlinuz
>>
>>How would I restore, such that I get the previous image, and not a
>>combination of the restored files and the new files?
> 
> 
> Instead of backing up individual system files and directories, consider
> making an image backup of the entire filesystem:
> # dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=10k | gzip > backup.dd.gz
> 
> Then upon restore, you're guaranteed to get the previous image.
> 
Thanks Tim,  I tried dd but it was taking forever.  tar took 3.5 minutes 
to write and dd took 15 before I cancelled it.  I'll try again with the 
bs=10k

Jay