OS backup procedure in Redhat Linux

[gobi_1]

Hi would like to ask how to perform an OS backup in Redhat linux?

Most of my experienced is in UX like ignite backup. Is there any thing same with this in linux?

please share the procesure.

thanks

gobi

[Ivan Krastev]

Use mondo - www.mondorescue.org

regards,
ivan

[Court Campbell]

dd

[Andres Stickar]

My experience with mondo was not good.
I did the DVD image but was impossible to restore the image.
Install a new RH environment is not difficult and short in time.
Provably the best idea is to perform a simple tar backup of the /etc and /home file systems.
Regards

A

[Nuwan Alwis]

you want offline backup then "dd" i guess.

[dirk dierickx]

when using 'dd' for disaster recovery purposes, don't forget to also save your partition layout with 'fdisk -l'

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

In the paid arena http://acronis.com works very well.

We use it for backups and system cloning.

SEP

[Asif Sharif]

Hi gobi,

We use "Mondo Rescue" for OS backup on tapes/DVD and it works fine. Its great tool like Ignite for HPUX.

Regards,
Asif Sharif

[gobi_1]

hi, thanks for all of you reply. i might use tar for the meantime since i have not tried mondo, but will try this in our demo unit.

thanks

[PAVIC Thierry]

I use mkcdrec tool :
you install it and configure easyly the Config.sh file
it makes an iso file that you must be burn on a CD or DVD
and you have your system on this media - you could start and install it after a crash.

I test it it's easy to use and reliable

[Joe Sullivan]

try www.storix.com

They have different types of bootable backups. You can download and "play" for 30 days. You can also call 4 tech support as well. They DO respond because they want to sell.


o "standalone" This one works great.

o A TSM - I also tried this one but had difficulties. Not because of storix but because of bos software not on my aix tsm server.

o network - Didn't test this one

[Tayde Molinar]

Hi,

We use clonezilla http://www.clonezilla.org/

Works very good!!!

Regards,

Tayde.

[tony j. podrasky]

Well, there are several ways depending on your configuration. I have the luxury of this being my system at home, so I can take the time to do it this way.

I have 2 9GB disks on my FW-SCSI channel.
(Both are bootable)

I also have a USB 360GB disk.

I also have a DDS3 tape drive.


Once a month I do the following:

o I do a shutdown. (SDA is the booted disk)

o I reboot from the SDB disk.

o I mount the SDA disk at /previous_boot_disk

o I cd to it and tar the entire disk to either the tape or to the USB disk.

o I umount the SDA disk and reboot from it.

o I initialize the SDB disk (fdisk / mke2fs -f / fsck).

o I mount the SDB disk at /new_boot_disk.

o I do a umask 0.

o I cd to /new_boot_disk.

o I untar the tape or USB disk's file to it.

o I run LILO.

o I reboot on the SDB disk.

--

With this method:

o I know my original disk works.

o I know (or will find out) that my copy disk works.

o I know (or will find out) that the tar of my previously booted disk is good.

o I can take the tape and the USB disk offsite and know that if something happens that I have a known good backup.

Yeah - there are going to be people laughing themselves silly at my old style way of doing stuff - but it works great and it's cheap.

Hey - I still have a Toshiba T4850CT with a 520MB disk and a 37MHz CPU that is running the Linux 1.2 kernel! It ran for 2 1/2 years without an error!

regards,
tonyp