[TriLUG] Linux Backup Strategies

[Aaron S. Joyner]

dd if=/dev/hda of=/path/to/samba/share/image.dmg

To dump a full-sized image of your disc to the samba share, the above 
command will do the trick.  On the other hand, if you'd prefer a more 
elegant solution (which only works over ftp) check out the g4u package.  
If space over speed is a concern, you can also compress the image like so:

dd if=/dev/hda | gzip > /path/to/samba/share/image.dmg

As an additional concern, if you'd like not to take up more space in the 
image than necessary, at the expense of not being able to "undelete" 
anything you may have already deleted (not such a big concern, imho) - 
you can clear out all of the once-used space on the drive, like this...

dd if=/dev/zero of=/zerofile.tmp ; rm /zerofile.tmp

If you have more than one partition, you'll need to create a zero file 
like the one above, for each partition.  A bash script to automate that 
based on /etc/fstab shouldn't be more than about 6 lines.  Keep in mind, 
that of course if you have more than one disc in the computer you'll 
need to do it for each disc, and of course you may need to adjust the 
/dev/hda references above if you're not using a single ide drive located 
as the primary master.

Personally, I wouldn't do it image-style as this suggests.  I would use 
tar or dump, as it creates a more concise image, and gives you the 
flexibility of doing incrementals in the future.  Also, tar or dump will 
give you the ability to easily do individual file restore.  As another 
step in the direction of elegance, Jeremy presented on rsync backups 
using rsbackup at the May meeting.  It's yet another "better" solution, 
although depending on your purposes it may be cumbersome over smb.

All of this was covered in Jeremy's and Jason's recent backup 
presentation.  The presentation itself should be searchable in the 
archives, sometime around the 2nd tuesday of May.  Hope that's a start!  :)

Aaron S. Joyner


Tarus Balog wrote:

> Okay, so I should have come to the meeting on this topic, but I have 
> a  quick question that I hope someone here can answer.
>
> I want to take an image of a Linux box and store it on an SMB share 
> as  a backup. Any ideas about getting this to work? If the image can 
> be  created and stored, how could it be restored?
>
> -T
>
> P.S. The client is a Windows shop and they do have Ghost. Anyone use  
> Ghost to back up Linux boxen?
>
>
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