[KLUG Members] drive ghosting

[Bruce Smith]

> > I've never used Ghost because Linux has all the utilities
> > required to save and restore itself.
> >
> > You can copy a Linux (system or non-system) partition
> > to another disk partition (or tape or CDR or ...) with
> > tar, cpio, ....
> 
> do you tar each partition to a file?  Then later do you create the file and 
> then untar the tarball to it? 

Depends on what I'm doing.  You can tar each partition to a file, a
tape, or put it on a CDR or other removable media of the required size.

Or if I'm making a backup of my system, I use tar to copy from disk to
disk.  As an example of copying the root partition and /home:

/sbin/mke2fs -j -b 1024 /dev/hda1
/sbin/mke2fs -j -b 1024 /dev/hda2
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/backup -t ext3
mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/backhome -t ext3
(cd /home; tar clpf - .) | (cd /mnt/backhome; tar xpf -)
(cd /; tar clpf - .) | (cd /mnt/backup; tar xpf -)
vi /mnt/backup/etc/fstab

> I guess I would need a linux boot diskette for  that right?  

You could use a self contained bootable Linux system to restore a tar
image on a different computer.  Tom's Root Boot, Linux Care BBC, ...

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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