restoring system

[Matthias Schniedermeyer]

On 24.04.2011 10:51, Robert Holtzman wrote:
> I have restored my home directory in the past using rsync but never the
> entire system. If I rsync / (on my usb drive containing the backup) to /
> on the computer with a fresh install of the OS, what problems will I run
> into? What about links? I am presently triple booting 3 linux distros and 
> want to delete one to install something else. The distro I'm installing
> will be on 3 partitions (/, /boot, and /home). Will what I'm proposing
> populate the directories in these partitions or will it dump everything
> into /?
> 
> I realize that I probably be better off creating a snapshot and
> restoring from that but I have never had good luck with MondoRescue or
> Clonezilla.
> 
> Thought I'd better ask now before I stuck my foot in it.

I reguarly move my systems to other storage (with rsync), which is 
relativly comparable.

In a nutshell
- The backup-filesytem has to have the capabilty to store 
uid/gid/permissions (and ACL/Xattr if needed)
- I assume a system using udev, which means no "special" files anywhere
- rsync -axH --numeric-ids --delete ...
  (also -A for ACL, and -X for Xattrs if needed)
  This copies everything, including hardlinks (-H)
- Each partition should be copied separatly (-x is for that)
- At least the root partition should be mounted somewhere else and 
rsynced from there, so that all mount-points can be copied correctlyX.

I ignore "problematic" demons, like databases, here.
If in doubt, go to single-user-mode first or at least stop all 
"problematic" demons and/or .... 

Last but not least is the boot-loader, but i ignore that too.




Bis denn

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