[lug] Backup

[Daniel Webb]

On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 10:50:14AM -0700, Siegfried Heintze wrote:

> So can I buy a service that would let me network boot across the public
> internet and then restore the entirety of my bootable linux and windows
> paritions using rdiff or rbackup? Anyone have a URL?

I haven't heard of such a thing, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  I
would imagine that's complicated enough the the customer support would kill
you.

> Now how would one restore a bootable NTFS partition? Network boot from Linux
> and mount the NTFS partition as writable (yeah, I know, you are not supposed
> to do that but assuming a hacker as typed fdisk, you have nothing to loose)
> and then use rdiff, or rsync or rbackup?
> 
> Or, could I network boot windows across the internet and then use windows to
> restore the partition? Hmmm... this may be the wrong mailing list to discuss
> this issue (no rotten tomatoes please!) But surely I'm not the only one who
> has a dual boot linux/windows machine! Maybe http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
> has some answers for me.

Ugh, why would you use Windows to do that kind of low-level work?  It's not
cut out for it.  Also, Microsoft makes this kind of flexibility difficult
because it would undermine the licensing control they covet.  I guess it
depends on how stable ntfs/write-mode is on Linux whether it would be worth
it.

Even if you network boot, there has to be some kind of low-level bootloader in
the system BIOS or a network card flash memory that knows you want to boot
from a certain IP.  Is that built into the system BIOS settings these days?  I
haven't noticed that setting.  When I was playing with it several years ago
you had to either boot from a floopy, boot from CD, or burn a EEPROM to put on
the ethernet card.  I'm talking about cheap off the shelf consumer gear, not
fancy-pants expensive gear.