Want ability to restore from failed upgrade.

[Chris W. Parker]

Steve Phillips <mailto:steve at focb.co.nz>
    on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 4:34 PM said:

> except you missed one small point.

Well, at this point, until I get my new backup software installed I
can't do a proper backup so those will have to do for the data side of
things. Configuration I was not particularly concerned with in regards
to the current daily backup plan that I have.

But I totally understand what you're saying about those backups not
being comphrehensive enought to restore a system.

> If you really want to back things up then just cpio (or tar, or
> amanda, or whatever) the entire file system less say /proc, and then
> move that entire system backup off to another system/hard
> drive/tape/etc (you could even practice a restore of this to another
> system to ensure that it all works happily and this would also give
> you a "live" backup waiting to go should things go wrong - either
> that or restore the image to another hard drive, cost of around $100
> USD, and if stuff goes west then simply plug it in, power up and away
> you go)

So you're saying if I tar the entire fs (minus /proc) I can somehow copy
it back? How do I do that? I don't understand how that would work unless
I were doing it remotely and not having booted the computer normally.

Here's why I'm confused. With image files don't you have to boot into a
special "operating system" that will allow you to overwrite all the
files that would normally be in use? (This is how it works for Windows
at least [I think].)



Thanks!
Chris.