On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, miden wrote:
The Dark World has had simple imaging solutions available for many years
(which offers a solution if you dual-boot. IIRCC Norton Ghost will
create an image of a Linux system).
I use Drive Image (from PowerQuest) which was bought by Symantec who
bought Norton. Drive Image works OK for my WinXP systems. Drive Image
from PowerQuest was decent but has some issues with MBR. The latest
Symantec Ghost can have problems with restores (making is risky). There
is a system at work where the Ghost makes corrupt backup images but only
tells you they are corrupt when you try to browse or restore the image
(ick).
For the average home user who is not likely to have to do reinstalls
very often and is therefore not likely to have the details of the
routine engraved on their brain, a simple up-to-date image would be a
godsend.
I agree. For example, Murphy's law occurred last night. Because I was
thinking of creating a better backup plan for my Linux systems, I had an
HD failure last night. I was reading Bacula's website and I thought that
I would double check that my simple backup script was scheduled via cron.
Of course, I had forgotten to do that. So my last backup was quite out of
date. Thinking that I'd better get a backup of the system right away, I
ran the backup script. Of course, during the backup, my HD died. And, Of
course, it was right before I was planning on going to bed (11:30 pm)
By 3 am, I had the system back up and running. Why the delay?
I checked the HD with a diag tool to confirm that it was failing.
I rebooted in recovery mode (single user) and failed the ro fsck.
I ran a fsck and had to type "y" about 200 times
I copied my important data to another HD
I ran my backup script again
I had to learn GRUB (yes, I'm only familiar with LILO)
I had to make a GRUB floppy
I had to boot from my backup drive via GRUB floppy
I realized that I forgot to make a /proc directory (system doesn't like
that :))
I had to put the failed HD back in the system so I could boot off it (not
ro) so I could make the f*ing /proc dir. I also remembered the /tmp dir.
I finally got the backup HD booting via the GRUB floppy.
I had to install GRUB on the backup HD
I had to make the swap partion and hook it up with swapon
I had to setup another backup HD
I had to backup the new system HD to the new backup HD (yes, I created a
f*ing proc dir).
I still have to boot off the backup drive (once for testing) and add the
backup script as a cron job.
I would be interested in a simple command line instruction which would
create an image of my system - and the instruction to reinstall that
image.
I would have saved a lot of time if I'd had a simple "restore from image
via a rescue CD" tool.
-m
_______________________________________________
Linux mailing list
Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca
http://www.oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux