[Wolves] System Backup

[Alan Pope]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 11:32:48PM +0100, rob wrote:
> I'm happy with my basic setup at the moment, so before monkeying around with 
> it and installing new packages I thought it best that I take a backup of it.
> 

Personally I backup using a nice gui tool called "sbackup" which I backup to
an external USB connected HDD. I run it once a week. It backs up all my data
in /home and config in /etc and the list of packages that have been
installed. If I ever borked my machine I'd just need to install Ubuntu again
from scratch, install sbackup and choose to restore from that USB hdd.

> I'm guessing that I need to create a new partition (I only have one HDD on 
> this computer) and copy an image onto that.

You could yes, and sbackup could backup for you to that extra partition.

> The HDD is plenty big enough 
> (18Gb).  Before starting,

Have you already allocated the whole 18GB or have you left some
unpartitioned space on the disk. If the latter then all you need do is use a
tool like gparted to make a new partition. If the former then you can use
gparted to shrink down the partition.

What are you backing up for? Clearly not to protect against hardware failure
as you'll have your data and your backup on one disk. Is this more a safety
net if you balls the system up installing software and configuring it badly?

> would I have to perform the Linux equivalent of a 
> Windows defrag?
> 

*Generally* you don't need to defrag Linux filesystems. I guess you're
asking this question as a prelude to shrinking the partition in readyness
for creating a new one. If this is a basic install of the OS it might be
quicker / easier to just reinstall with more care taken to make the
partitions right than try to muck about shrinking. Don't get me wrong, it's
possible to shrink some partition types very easily, but can be scary for
the newbie.

> I have Norton Ghost and a live knoppix CD.  I'm guessing that Norton Ghost 
> uses a different filesystem to Linux so it's best to use knoppix.  Am I 
> right?
> 

There's G4L - Ghost for Linux too. 

Newer versions of Ghost should be fine, but I've not used them, and
generally wouldn't because it's payware. I've used knoppix and just used tar
and dd to copy a filesystem but it's nowhere near as pleasant as scheduling
a backup in sbackup :)

> So presumably the procedure would be:
> 
> Boot to live knoppix CD
> Unmount hda (if necessary)

(it won't be mounted - knoppix does autodetect but not automount local
partitions) 

> create new partition using parted

or gparted.

> use dd to create the image
> 

> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
> 

To be honest I just wouldn't do what you're doing. I'd backup over the
network to another machine or to an external disk or to /var on the local
partition.

Cheers,
Al.