Full system backup

[roman.styler]

Hi All.
Recently, I've bought small server for home and installed tinycore. I'm new in Linux and want to do experiments with it.
Main question is: I want to make full backup of my boot partition. It's not big (60-70Mb). And if I'll make mistakes - I can restore my operation system with all files.
Please, can you help me, how can I do it?
Thanks.

[SamK]

And if I'll make mistakes - I can restore my operation system with all files.

Are you wanting to use TC specifically for the back-up or are you just wanting a simple way to return your system to a known good condition if your experiments go wrong?  If it the latter, Clonezilla might be worth looking at:
http://clonezilla.org
It is not strictly a back-up application but takes a snapshot-image of a partition or entire disk (often referred to as ghosting).  It runs from a bootable CD or USB flash drive and can compress the image of the partition or disk making it easier to store.

Once you know how to use it and have tested your image restores correctly, you will be able to conduct whatever experiments you wish, knowing that returning your system to the condition it was on the date the image was created takes only a few minutes.
 

[Juanito]

If you want to backup your partition to an external usb drive, you can boot from a tc cd and do something like this:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/sda1 bs=64k conv=notrunc,noerror

[roman.styler]

Thank for answers.
As I found out, I can create copy of main partition only if I booted from cd or usb?
It's very bad - because server, which I use, doesn't have monitor and keyboard.
How about soft partclone? Has anybody tried it?

[AlabamaPaul]

I've used both partimage and partclone and they both worked for me. Clonezilla uses partclone, I believe primarily because partclone supports more filesystems than partimage.

I have submitted TC extensions for both partimage and partclone.

However, both tools expect the filesystem to be unmounted as backing up a live filesystem is dangerous.

You might consider creating virtual machines and doing your experimenting / learning in the VM and leave your primary OS alone ?  If you horribly mangle a VM, delete it and start over.

[tinypoodle]

IIRC, partimage could possibly work over network, but partition to save would have to be umounted.

[curaga]

One of TC's features is an in-ram boot with the bootcodes "base norestore", from which you could do a backup since no partition is mounted. However in your case, you would have no access there either.

I recommend just creating a tarball of the partition contents.

[SamK]

Not quite as tidy as the suggestion above to use virtual machine testing, is to create a virtual network connection (VNC) between your physical server and a PC on your network.

Both TC and Clonezilla cater for remastering.  The resulting CD or USB stick is used to boot your physical server without using a keyboard or screen.  It is also made to automatically boot to a running VNC server.  The disk in your physical server will not be mounted and will be ready to clone, back-up or whatever you decide to do.  

The PC will run a VNC client and display the server desktop on the client screen.  Whatever you do on this display will be conducted on your physical server as you have established a remote control set up.

As I have never needed to remaster either a TC or Clonezilla CD I will not be able to provide much in the way of advice on this.  However, I have created a TC machine which boots-up with a running tightvnc server ready to be accessed by a client machine - its not too difficult.

Enjoy your experimentation.
  

[jur]

I thought about this when starting out with tcl; so I made duplicate partitions, and later made a rescue usb stick with all the stuff on it.

Still later, I finally realised that tcl is so small and modular there is no point in doing this. The only thing I have duplicated are a bunch of custom scripts. The rest is standard and tcl is small and modular so even if there is a non-recovarable disc crash or something, it is very fast and easy to set up again.

tinycorelinux - no backup needed, being small and modular. The best!

[roman.styler]

Thank's to all! You realy helped me.
I have access to my server, but it doesn't have monitor and keyboard.
I think, sometimes I will connect them to make backup of my system. I hope it will be best solution.

[gutmensch]

there is also an extension called fsarchiver, which iirc allows live backup of mounted file systems... ;-) so could be worth a try but better do a real backup before, haha