How to tar /

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 00:20, david walcroft wrote:
> I want to compress my whole [/] system to burn on to a dvd-r dl,my sys 
> is about 10.5GB,what is the best way to achieve this when my sys is 
> 'live' and constantly changes.

Typically, the files that change are not ones required for system
operation, so you aren't likely to have trouble running after
a restore from a tar image of the live system.  If you have
databases or similar programs that need to be saved in a consistent
way, shut them down or use their own online dump mechanism first.
I usually make separate runs per filesystem, using the --one-file-system
option and repeating for each mount point.  This automatically
excludes /proc and avoids walking into any isos or network mount
points that happen to be active.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com