Running filesystem backup?

[Rafał Radecki]

Hi all. I currently have a problem. I try to make a backup of a running /
filesystem to a second disc. I've read tha some people use rsync for it. I
mount the second harddisc at /mnt/hdb1 and issue a command:

rsync -vaHx --progress --numeric-ids --delete \
    --exclude-from=asylum_backup.excludes --delete-excluded \
    / /mnt/hdb1

Then I shutdown the system, remove the first disc and try to boot the
system with a rescue cd to install grub through grub-install.

I chroot to the second disc (the filesystem which I copied earlier through
rsync) and try to use grub-install but someting isn't ok with /proc, /sys,
.etc. They are empty.
I thought that rsync copied the whole / filesystem but was that really? What
do you think about backuping running / filesystems with rsync? Could it be
an appropriate tool in that context or not? I want to make a copy which in
case of the first disks' failure could be used quite fast (for example only
with gub-install to repair MBR).

Any help will e very kindly appreciated.

With regards,
R.
-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed