How to take Redhat linux OS backup on tapes/CD?

[AA786]

How to take Redhat linux OS backup on tapes/CD?

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

You can use tar, star or an utility like mondo rescue.

[tony j. podrasky]

I stopped using tape backup in favor of a USB disk silo.

I have 2 disks in my Linux system: the one I am booted from and the one that is the backup.

I rotate between which is the boot and which is the backup monthly.

Every month I boot from whichever is the backup. Then, I mount the disk that was the boot disk for the previous month and tar it to the USB silo disk. You want to do this so that there are no open files on disk you want to back up.

When the backup is done, I boot from the previous month's boot disk. Then, I mount the backup disk, do a mke2fs on it, built it from the backup on the USB silo, edit the fstab and lilo files, and boot from it. Now the disk that was the backup is the bootdisk.

If anything weird should happen, I can boot the original boot disk and see what happens. I've only run into a problem once - and the disk I had built was screaming about seek errors for months... :-)

The thing I like about backing up to USB, is that like tape, I can take the backup offsite.

Hope that helps.

regards,
tonyp

[David Nixon]

There is the COPYUTIL command for making
a bootable recovery tape. This is available
from the Offline Diagnostic environment.
At least for the Integrity server series.