On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@(protected):
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Mark Shields <laebshade@(protected):
> >
> > Look into what's called a "stage 4 backup":
> > http://blinkeye.ch/mediawiki/index.php/GNU/Linux_System_Backup_Script_(stage4)
> >
> > I've had to actually use it once, and it worked fine. It already excludes
> > the appropriate files:
> >
> > /dev
> > /lost+found
> > /mnt
> > /proc
> > /sys
> > /tmp
> > /usr/portage
> > /usr/src
> > /var/log
> > /var/tmp
> >
> > /var/db
> > /var/cache/edb
> >
> > It doesn't back up the MBR or the partition tables (primary or logical),
> > though you could edit the script to do that.
> >
> > --
> > - Mark Shields
>
> Thanks Mark. That looks interesting.
>
> I'm not clear about the process of actually making the backup. This
> get run on a live file system? I suppose the things it excludes if it
> does are the things that might be changing?
>
> - Mark
>

So I tried this out. Although I had a couple of directory issues
getting it ready to go it did run eventually.

My issue at this point is a matter of gaining confidence that it
backed up the right stuff. Considering my file system usage the file
size seems smallish at 1.2G.

lightning ~ # df -h
Filesystem        Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2         9.2G 6.5G 2.3G 75% /
udev             10M 184K 9.9M  2% /dev
/dev/sda6         3.7G 740M 2.8G 21% /usr/src
/dev/sda8         14G  11G 2.5G 82% /home
shm             497M   0 497M  0% /dev/shm
none            497M   0 497M  0% /tmp/jack
lightning ~ #

The terminal where it ran said it backed up about 3.3GB into a 1.2GB
file. My file system usage (for a minimal backup) is roughly the 6.5GB
on / since minimal doesn't back up /home and /usr/src which I
convieniently have on separate partitions anyway. I wonder if half of
that 6.6GB really isn't needed?

Anyway, the scripts seemed to have worked, but how to verify? That's
the question.

Could I restore this backup into a different subdirectory somewhere
and then chroot into it?

- Mark
--
gentoo-user@(protected)