[K12OSN] backup question

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 22:45, Robert Arkiletian wrote:

> No I'm not. Maybe I was not clear. I meant:
> 
> boot the server from a live cd
> mount the server scsi / and /home drives
> rsync the scsi drives to the remote backup
> 
> In this way I'm *NOT* booting off the filesystem which I'm backing up. 
> 
> > 
> > I find rsync fast and easy to use even when the files are being worked
> > upon and it runs with exclude list so that no essential things like
> > background and such settings (usually the ".*" files) can be excluded.
> 
> Okay so your saying you CAN use rsync on the booted filesystem. I
> thought you should NOT do this. But I can't remember why.

Yes, you can cp or rsync from the root filesystem.  You won't get a
perfect copy of files actively being written, but those usually
aren't critical for running.   You should avoid the /proc filesystem
since those aren't real files.  One way to do this is to use the
--one-file-system option with cp, rsync, or tar, and do separate
runs for each filesystem you want.  On the other hand, if you are
trying to restore a whole copy, it's probably not a good idea to cp 
or rsync *to* the root of a running system and booting from a live
cd is one way that works.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     les at futuresource.com