[K12OSN] re: Got to rebulid -- how to take an image for checkpointing (Robert Moskowitz) (Matt Oquist)

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 13:10, Matt Oquist wrote:
> I knew I would forget something... /proc *must* exist on your restored
> system before it will boot. So when you restore, you must also do
> this:
> 
> If you're in the chroot of your new / partition:
> $ mkdir /proc

I normally use the --one-file-system option with tar or rsync
instead of excluding /proc and haven't had to make the directory
on restores.  That mode must copy the mount point but not
continue down it.

>     Also, all of these things can be automated in your crontab; I use
>     nightly rsync backups, personally.

Backuppc will do that for you, taking a lot less space.  You just
need to look up the command line to have it reconstruct a full
tar image if you ever need a bare iron restore - and it provides
a lot nicer interface if you need to grab an old file or two.

Anyway there are any number of ways to get the partitions and
contents back on a disk.  The tricky part is making it bootable,
but you can let the install CD do the work for you.  If you
have either labeled your new partitions to match the old ones
or modified /etc/fstab and /etc/grub.conf to use partition
names you can boot the install CD with 'linux rescue' at the
boot prompt, let it detect the existing system and mount it,
then 'chroot /mnt/sysinstall' as it suggests, then run 'grub-install',
then exit (twice), remove the CD and reboot.  
If the system isn't automatically mounted, you can use
the rescue mode tools to fix things up and try again or
do the mount(s) manually.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com