Want ability to restore from failed upgrade.

[Jessica Zhu]

> 
> > 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.

It's better to get a new harddrive, partition that new harddrive and make 
filesystem (ext3 most likely) on it first. And then NFS mount and do tar 
the entire fs(minus /proc) to that new harddrive. After tar, install boot 
loader on new harddrive. You can test this backup. If things go west, just 
switch in this back-up, you should be fine. 

Jessica