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On Mon, 21 Oct 2013, Daniel Robinson wrote:
So on IRC last night I was told that I should use dd instead of tar. from what I understand dd will clone the disk including free space. I don't want to back up free space, however I do want to clone the entire disk. In windows I'd use "Acronis True Image" to back up and restore partition tables and their content whilst not backing up the free space Thus saving space on the back up drive. I guess what I am looking for is a solution that will back up my system files as mentioned above and a bootable cdrom which has recovery software on it to allow me to restore the system files when i break everything. Afraid to progress any further until I can find such a solution.
you might be wondering why you're not getting lots of replies along the lines of; I do it this way, etc.
Maybe that's because in-general, we don't ...
have a habit of braking my system usually just after I set it up just the way I like it.
And its as simple as that.If you want a clone of your drive, including partition table, then use dd which I suggested on IRC. You can pipe dd into gzip to compress the output file - improve compression by filling the drive with zeros first (dd if=/dev/zero of=foo bs=1M ; rm foo) to overwrite old file data.
If you want to copy all your files then use tar/rsync/cpio or even plain old 'cp'. They all have ways to preserve premissions and ownerships etc. Start by reading their fine manuals.
Alternatively, just re-install from scratch. Afterall, you're not going to break it that often...
What do you do that you need a reinstall anyway? Linux isn't windows. Backup your data and the OS will generally look after itself unless you do something silly as root. All you need is a list of packages once you've got what you want - e.g. dpkg --get-selections > ~/mypackagelist.txt
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq