[lug] Backup

[Siegfried Heintze]

>
>Daniel Webb [lists at danielwebb.us] wrote: 
>I just boot from a knoppix cd, setup the network by hand
>(iwconfig/ifconfig/route/resolv.conf, unless you have a router with
>DHCP setup, in which case there's no setup for Knoppix), partition,
>mke2fs, then use rsync or rdiff-backup to restore.  Then setup
>/boot/grub/menu.lst and run grub-install on the boot drive.  (Or you
>could use lilo, but why??)
>

Daniel Webb, 

Hmmm... this sounds like an interesting strategy. May I have your
permission to quote you on the cygwin mailing list? I would like to
learn if the cygwin ports of rsync or rdiff-backup are smart enough to
restore a windows partition (assuming there was some windows
counterpart of knoppix like a windows rescue disk). Windows is pretty
finicky about the placement of certain files, like the registry.

Fortunately, I could try this strategy out since I have a redundant
boot disk on my machine. It would be pretty scary to try this out the
first time if I only had one boot disk.

But where does one find an offline repository for rsync or
rdiff-backup? What would I google for? I'm familiar with web hosting
services and internet service providers but this is a new one for me.


>
>
>Can't comment on the Windows aspect of it much, since I last used
>Windows in 1999.  I do remember that back then, it was very difficult
>to just copy the files over and have a working Windows system.  The
>Windows backup program that came with Windows 98 expected you to
>install Windows, *then* run the restore.  That program failing me 3
>times out of 3 was part of what spurred me to learn Linux.  Once I
>realized what I could do with Linux, I erased Windows from all my
>computers, and haven't put it back since.  I hope to never again know
>more about Windows than the average office worker.
>
>
>
>> I guess one can boot from the network, but I don't know if my network 
>> card has the required capabilities. How do I tell? If I do have that 
>> capability int my network card, would I be booting from another PC's 
>> drive or could this be a consumer grade NAS or SAN (assume there are such
things).
>
> 
>I've done this for diskless Linux clusters, and it works well but
>there's definitely an investment in learning how to do this.  You
>probably don't want to learn how to do this unless you want to run
>diskless machines.

Is it possible to do a network boot thru a firewall from an internet
on someone else's machine?


>
>
>> Is there a better way to mitigate this other than my procedure of 
>> weekly connecting a second drive and using "telinit 1 ; cp /dev/sda1
/dev/sda2"?
>
>
>I have cloned many Thinkpad 600Es using the simple method I described
>above, and cloning is the same thing as a backup restore, so I know it
>works and is easy too.

How do you feel about mondo rescue? Do you like your method better?
Why?

I hope to try mondo soon because it will restore my ntfs parititions
too. I heard some negative things about it however. Apparently there
is not much active development.

Thanks,
Siegfried