[Chester LUG] Creating a system backup onto tape.

[Stuart Burns]

It's an ext3 filesystem.

I did look at the dump command and shall give it a bash. Thing is, when you
start adding and configuring files, it can (and does in my case) amount to
days. If the entire thing went AWOL, to manually restore would take weeks.
Not something you really think about that much. i think for the initial dump
i shall dump in single user mode and then if i do it at runlevel 3 and it
doesnt work, i have a backup.

Thanks everyone!

Stu

2008/5/29 Roger Downing <r.downing at dl.ac.uk>:

> On Wednesday 28 May 2008 23:22:52 Stuart Burns wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I'm hoping someone can help here. I've setup a new linux box (Opensuse
> > 10.3) and it has an AIT 3 tape drive attached to it. Now backing up home
> is
> > easy enough, but how does one create a backup of the actual system so in
> a
> > disk failure it can be restored?
> >
> > Anyone know?
> >
> > Stu
>
> Hmm I would look into using dump and restore. The problem would be that
> they
> only operate on ext2/3 file systems so if you don't use one of them you are
> out of luck on that front. I use them very widely at work to back up about
> 60
> servers to tape and have found them excellent, especially with the fact
> that
> they have built-in abilities to perform incremental and differential
> backups.
> You can also apply bzip2 compression on the fly to the backups which can
> increase speed / decrease required capacity very significantly (think 8:1
> in
> some cases).
>
> I have heard reports that one ought not to run dump on a r/w mounted file
> system but I've had no trouble at all in 4 years of doing it so would
> heartily recommend.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Roger Downing
> eScience systems administrator
> STFC
> Daresbury Laboratories
> Keckwick Lane
> Warrington
> WA4 4AD
>
> Tel: 01925 603937
> Mbl: 07880 736154
>
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