HOWTO: Easily make a full system backup (stage4)

BlinkEye · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:37 pm Post subject:

new version out: v.3.1.0.

see first post for the change log (quite a lot this time).
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Master One · l33t Joined: 25 Aug 2003 Posts: 754 Location: Austria

Sheepdogj15 · Guru Joined: 07 Jan 2005 Posts: 430 Location: Backyard

i've noticed this too. if you have something in one of the include lists and yet are trying to exclude something within the include, the include will override the exclude.

i know because it set up to include /tmp, but i had the script building the tarball in /tmp/backup. i set it to exclude /tmp/backup, but i found it was still trying to back it up.

From what i can tell, anything that is not explicitely included or excluded is by default included into the tarball. so, the operative thing to do (unless Blinkeye finds a way to fix this) would be to just not explicitely include a folder where you are trying to exclude something within that folder.

the only problem here is that you may still find that you want to have the option to include something or not.
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BlinkEye · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:48 pm Post subject:

i'm working on it. i got a version with this feature up but want to run a full test again.
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BlinkEye · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 3:47 pm Post subject:

new version out: v.3.2.

It's now possible to add a folder to $custom_include_list while excluding a folder withing that folder.

Example:

kommissar · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 May 2005 Posts: 78

I just wanted to leave this post (six pages down) to let you know that this is a great tool; I've often wondered if I could just bzip my system. I intend to use it and tell my friends about it. Keep up the good work!

troyboy162 · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Fort Drum NY

great script!!!! i have a identical system to my freind and we stole his install with your script and dumped it on my comp quite easily.

i am having one problem... i get the "unable to open an intial console" message right before it turns on my swap partition. everything seems to work fine it just stops giving messages in the boot process and goes to gdm after a long pause where it would be normaly be spitting boot messages down the screen.

anyone else having this problem?

is there a cure?
for infos sake this is a 2005 amd64 install
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BlinkEye · Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 6:23 am Post subject:

this sure sounds like an udev problem. which version of the script did you use? /dev/null and /dev/console are backed up since quite some time (these are two devices udev needs before initializing). For solving the problem see the gentoo udev guide.
in short

Jedidiah · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 13

Does anyone know will this work on a mac running OSX?

i have tried it on my linux machine, and i have need for a utility like this at work. the senario is this, we just got in 42 new macs that need to have identical setups, using the mac utils is out of the option becuase it takes way to long to transfer/copy the data from one machine to another. will this script work on a mac, so i can make one backup of the working machine and just unarchive it on everyother machine? will it work if i remove all of the folders from the default exclude list etc? I need to get a complete copy

thanks in advance

troyboy162 · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Fort Drum NY

iverson0881 · Apprentice Joined: 08 Jan 2004 Posts: 285 Location: CA

hmm i think your server links are down and i'm not if that is the latest version or the one embedded into the forum is the latest.

just thought you'd like to know.

EDIT: nevermind the one embedded into the site is the latest one. very nice script man!! thanks

Pseud · Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 4:41 am Post subject:

Thanks for making our lives easy

Just have one question:

The script resulted in a ~1.7G tar.gz file. After "splitting" filename.tar.gz at the end, I'm left with filename.tar.gz and filename.tar.gz_a
Is this the way the split command works? I was expecting filename.tar.gz_a and filename.tar.gz_b
So, I don't know which comes first when i cat the files to merge them back later.

Thanks!
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BlinkEye · Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 8:48 am Post subject:

BlinkEye · Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 9:00 am Post subject:

Pseud · Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:11 pm Post subject:

BlinkEye,

I used the split command from inside the script (just uncommended it). I'll give it another shot and see what happens.

Meanwhile, I have another question/suggestion:
I saw the man page for the split command and there seems to be no option for not keeping the original file. This means if one intends to actually burn the backup onto CDs, just having to split the original into pieces will imply double the disk space requirement! (and this matters a lot for backups going into a few GBs). Is there a simple way around this? It would be great if the script itself could handle such a thing through an optional command line parameter ... generating a backup as a set of tar.gz files instead of one tar.gz file, each file limited to a reasonable size limit (like 690m, as you suggest). Is this do-able?
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bigmatt · n00b Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

umm I get this error when running the script

ERROR: /var/log/portage not found! Check your $default_include_files

and i dont really know what to do.

BlinkEye · Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 4:54 am Post subject:

just remove /var/log/portage from the $default_include_files. originally, it looked like:

bigmatt · n00b Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

thanks alot worked fine

.

NightTwix · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 58

thanks BlinkEye, this script is really useful and works fine after little customiziation.

just a quick reminder to everyone:
be sure you doublecheck that your archive is not corrupted.
Especially when you copy it to a windows-box via Samba and burn it on CD.

I ended up with a corrupt archive somehow...

The best thing is to make a md5sum after each copy process and compare it to the original.

Maybe the script could automatically generate a md5sum after making the archive

BlinkEye · Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 3:32 pm Post subject:

well, the script verifies if tar/gzip/bzip creates a corrupted archive or not. i don't know why samba would cripple a file during transfer ...

either way, if you want a md5sum add

Jedidiah · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 13

Jedidiah · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 13

Ok it just errored out again running it on the mac, here is the error, any ideas how to overcome it?

BlinkEye · Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:25 pm Post subject:

Jedidiah · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 13

Thanks Blinkeye i added the /System /Library and /Applications folders to the default exclude list, i am running the command again so i will let you know in the morning weather or not it worked. the reason why i am using this script is because there seems to be a serious lack of tools for backing up an entire mac system (what i really need is an app that does what Norton Ghost does on the PC for a mac, this script is close enough). also, of the few apps that i have found, they all take just as long, if not longer, so the two hour thing seems to be a mac problem and not a problem with the script (a fresh install of osx 10.4 with microsoft office seems to take up roughly 26 gigs) so if you ask me, two hours to compress 26 gigs down to about 11 gigs isn't too bad (espesially in comparison with the two days it used to take on our os9 machines, now if it will only work)

thanks for your help, expect at least one more post from me tomorrow

jedidiah

BlinkEye · Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 2:09 pm Post subject: