[lug] Backup

[Daniel Webb]

On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 04:39:53PM -0700, Siegfried Heintze wrote:

> 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.

Hm, that would be interesting.  Something tells me it's going to be a hell of
a lot harder on Windows, but I'm really just speculating there.

> How do you feel about mondo rescue? Do you like your method better?
> Why?
 
I can't comment because I've never used Mondo.  Since my method is so simple
(to me, anyhow) and always works for Linux systems, I haven't had any
incentive to try other things.  You do need to be comfortable with how Linux
boots to feel confident doing it at the raw level like that though.  For
example, several times I have forgotten to update /etc/fstab before rebooting
a mirrored system, which won't boot right if it's different.  If you didn't
know that fstab told the system where to look for the root partition, you'd be
out of luck when you did that.  It's also much better to use grub for the
bootloader because you can boot manually if you mess up a parameter instead of
having to boot Knoppix again, fix lilo.conf, run lilo, and reboot.  I also
compile my own kernel, don't use initrd, and only use lvm and raid on my /home
directory, that makes it simpler to restore.