Full System Backup Over Network


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Thread: Full System Backup Over Network

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Full System Backup Over Network

    What's the best method to do this?

    A tarball with compression? How would I go about restoring the backup if the filesystem were ever wiped out?

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by redhat81
    What's the best method to do this?

    A tarball with compression? How would I go about restoring the backup if the filesystem were ever wiped out?
    Yes, many go with the tarball method of doing things. What I would do is create a tarball of your system as it stands currently, and then save it somewhere over the network (via Samba share, or however you choose to do your netfs work). If your fs manages to completely fail, you could easily use a livecd to reformat the partitions so they are working appropriatly. From the livecd also, you could probably log back onto the backup server where the tarball image is, copy it onto the new fs and extract it into the fs. From that point, the big trick would be to restore the bootloader. To do that, you would have to perform a chroot into the fs and then execute the appropriate commands for the bootloader. From that point, I'm led to believe your system should be pretty much completely restored.

    Sorry that's kind of a bit much for one paragraph of message. I'm sure others could clarify particular things.
    The Swain

    dswain

  3. #3
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    Here's an interesting article about cpio, which (supposedly) allows you to restore what you can from even damaged tarballs.

    http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1213

    Worth a read and some consideration, I think.

    Rick D.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
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    Hi Redhat

    Have a look at this howto on howtoforge to do this
    http://howtoforge.com/dedicated_serv...e_systemimager

    Uses SystemImager to take an image of a running server to a network location ( a la Norton Ghost but open source) and then be able to restore the machine to the original state.
    Can be used to image a particular server to facilitate disater recovery or change management, or to image many machine from the single standard image.

    I am using it to take an image of my server after initial installation, then using tar archive to backup home dirs to the network,

    In the event of machine failure, I would re-imige the server with the original image, then restore my latest data backup,

    KenP
    Last edited by KenP; 05-07-2006 at 11:49 PM.

  5. #5
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    network backup

    Another idea might be using partimage. The SystemRescueCD is a liveCD and assuming you have physical access to the server it is possible to backup and restore over the network.

  6. #6
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    Or rsync it...

  7. #7
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    I'm using DAR which is a re-write of tar for disks instead of tapes. It's pretty flexible and easy to use. I backup almost my entire system so if I ever have to reload due to a disk failure (again) it'll be as simple as running dar to extract them back.

    I've got a large exclusion list to keep the variable/non-important things out but system wise I've got the entire thing. There is also a GUI frontend available called [url=http://kdar.sourceforge.net/[KDAR[/url] which uses the KDE toolkit, once you figure out the basics the command line is very easy and you can make a good cron job that runs it.

    I have my cron job send the backup over to my server when it's done, I can provide my script if you'd like for an example.

  8. #8
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    Since my last post, yeah I know 7 days ago but why stop learning, I have used the System Rescue CD and partimage to save and restore a Win2000 partition from a FAT32 partition on a 2nd hard drive. This should certainly work (especially via a cron job actuating a script weekly!) to backup an entire parition:
    http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

    From my personal syslog file:
    NOTE THAT I HAVE AN NAS to/from which I copied files indicated "copy to/from network device" I love this NAS: http://web.ripnet.com/~rdeschen/NASL...%20server.html
    Boot off of systemresccd use partimage to make an image of the Win2000 partition (/dev/hda1) on HitachiHD and save onto the Suse9.2 partition (/dev/hda4):
    mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/temp4
    partimage save /dev/hda1 /mnt/temp4/home/user/temp/win2000Apr30.gz

    use root login to make sure the file ends in *.gz like this, and that everyone has read/write permission
    Copy *.gz file to a network device or CD or DVD.


    Copy *.gz file from network device or CD or DVD to /home/user/temp on ToshibaHD (/dev/hda3)
    systemresccd boot
    mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/temp3
    partimage restore /dev/hda1 /home/user/temp/Win2000Apr30.gz
    copied without any errors, could boot into either Win2000 and Suse 9.2 without any error messages
    Last edited by rdeschene2; 05-16-2006 at 12:18 AM.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
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    128
    I know this post has basically been used up. But nontheless, I use dd. Yeah, pretty drastic, but easily used. My company is too cheap to actually purchase servers with raid controllers, so to accomodate this I purchase 2 hard drives (ide...bleh...) and them run dd to copy all info across. I've had to use the spare hard drive several times and it works out perfectly. I have also used dd to create a file on a NFS mount and was able to restore using fundamentally a bare metal restore with it. Fundamentally a ghost type image only I never have to worry about the system being down to create the backup.

    dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sda

    that would copy identical image to the other drive.

    dd if=/dev/sda of=/nfsmount/file.iso

    If a failure, i then boot off a live cd and mount the nfs share:

    dd if=/nfsmount/file.iso of=/dev/sda

    Pretty extreme but highly effective and somewhat efficient in that I don't have to rely on rebuilding or laying the OS and it's just a few commands...
    terets

    Gentoo is a way of life...

    Registered Linux User #138016

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