On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 11:40 -0500, dman [ at ] lanhouse [ dot ] ca wrote: > 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). So that's a definite no-o-o-o! What followed in dman's response is a perfect example of the problem. Surely there is a simple (commandline?) application hidden away in the thousands of programs that come with every Linux distro that could do the job? Anybody? > > 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. > Exactly! And one that doesn't require an ordinary user to be running a home server farm (not even a one cow server farm). -m