[K12OSN] tar to take an image for checkpointing

[Robert Moskowitz]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 18:43, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>   
>> Matt Oquist wrote:
>>     
>>>> Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:19:28 -0400
>>>> From: "Robert Moskowitz" <rgm at htt-consult.com>
>>>> Subject: [K12OSN] Got to rebulid -- how to take an image for checkpointing
>>>>
>>>> So how can I take a real good snap shot of my drive.  I would want 
>>>> something like GHOST where I would boot from CD and image to a USB 
>>>> harddrive or network drive....
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> With a (p)OS like Windows(TM), you need a "ghosting" program because
>>> the system has loads of secret binary data that keep it from working
>>> if you just copy the filesystem contents of the OS to another system.
>>> Thankfully, Linux is part of the UNIX tradition and the entire system
>>> is portable.
>>>
>>> 1. To create a complete, compressed, ready-to-roll system backup on a remote system:
>>> $ cd /
>>> $ tar czvf - / | ssh user at remotehost "cat > systembackup.tgz"
>>>       
>> This hung on /media/cdrom
>>
>> So I need a -T option with a file listing the desired diretories?
>>     
>
> I always do a 'df' or 'mount' first to note the filesystems that
> I want to save, then repeat the command for each one (with a
> different destination name, of course) using the
> --one-file-system option to tar (or rsync, etc.).  This keeps
> it from walking into /proc and and nfs or iso mount points
> that it might encounter.  You do have to be careful not to
> miss anything, though.
Further evidence there is a lot I don't know  :)

I use df occationally, just to check space available (df -h), but have 
not used it for anything else.

It seems you are implying there is a way to tar a partition.

Also you seem to imply that TARing /proc is bad.  Yet it seems I have 
seen a comment that for a rebuild, you need that directory?

Since /home is in its own partition, I really don't want to include it 
in my OS backup....