fcisler
Premium
join:2004-06-14
Riverhead, NY
| FreeBSD backup complete system
Yes, i've read
»www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/han···ics.html
I'm making a copy of /usr right now using dump. It's slow and not something I fully understand so I'm not really comfortable with it.
I'm wondering what my best options would be. My goal here is that this is a project which I'll be backing up frequently, and ultimately i'd like to be able to boot off of a CD and just install this "image" to the hard drive. I'm also not opposed to taking the HD out and using something like acronis.
Any suggestions? Ideally I would like a program which I run which can dump an ISO either over SSH or to a USB HD. Is that possible? I'm not expecting to then take this ISO and burn it to a CD and boot, but I'd like to boot from a LiveCD of some type and then tell it to write this ISO to the HD. |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| dump does exactly what you want, and can do incremental updates to the snapshot (so you don't waste space for daily backups).
Just remember to use -L when dump'ing on a mounted/live file system.
To restore, it's as simple as:
- newfs /dev/ad...
- mount /dev/ad... /usr
- cd /usr && restore -r -f /path/to/dumpfile
You can also use restore's -x option and/or a path to a specific file (this is slow, though, as it has to seek through the entire dump).
dump/restore also work remotely (see the man pages for details).
For me, since I don't have enough disk space to backup the entirety of the file systems, I just use rsnapshot to a local gmirror'd set of disks. Then at least I have my personal data (/usr/home), custom scripts/programs (/global/bin), settings (/etc, /usr/local/etc), web data (/usr/local/www) and mysql databases/logs/etc (/var).
--
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. -Socrates |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
| reply to fcisler
Be aware of problems with dump on UFS2 filesystems -- see section "dump/restore": »wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/···d_issues
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Consider using something like rsnapshot instead, but be aware if you have any programs that rely on file mtimes for importance (such as classic UNIX mbox mail), these will be stomped/lost.
Finally, I don't know what your big focus is with ISO images, but I would recommend you stop with it. It's not a format that is often focused upon when doing backups or snapshots, so you'll be going to great lengths to make unnecessary ISO images. You can use any of the above solutions with ssh, or dumping directly to a USB hard disk (but be aware there are problems with the USB stack on FreeBSD as well). You might be better off with a standard hard disk hooked up to something like this, which is connected to your PC via a eSATA or SATA port. It's going to be loads faster, and won't use the USB stack.
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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fcisler
Premium
join:2004-06-14
Riverhead, NY
| thanks deblin and koitsu.
I don't have anything that relies upon mtimes AFAIK, but a good thing to know.
I didn't have a fascination with ISO, I just figured it was a generic file type/container that people would know. Mainly what I wanted was a single file for the entire hard drive - hence ISO.
I think i'm going to go the route of pulling the HD and using acronis. I don't have to back it up that often. Thanks. |
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