Yet another backup question

[rex]

Another backup question?

Right now I'm installing FreeBSD 7 with KDE on Latitude D420 . Once the installation and configuration is done I want to create a backup of my installation so that I can restore it in future. I searched the web and this foroum and found two tools "dd" and "dump". Problem with dd is that it'll copy all the sectors wether they are used or not, so I believe that for my 60GB hd I'll need equal amount of backup space, which is bit expencive in terms of space. Now with dump can I just dump root "/" on an external drive and restore it back in future with restore. If yes can some one please tell me the command. I don't want to dump it to a single file like backup.dump, instead I would prefer to dump the contents of "/" in a directory in my external drive which is mounted at "/mnt/backup".

And what is the procedure to restore such dump. install the base system and use restore to copy the contents from /mnt/backup back? If yes what is the command?

I tried few things but they didn't work. Don't know what is wrong.

[graudeejs]

check this.
http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2238

you can dump any of filesystems (entire filesystem)
simplified example
dump .... / - will dump root, but won't dump /var, /usr etc

[map7]

I've been using dump to backup my 4 disk RAID 5 configuration running FreeBSD 6.2.

I have tested a restore of the full system using the method 'killasmurf86' explains onto a single drive in a different computer and it all works well.

I would recommend dump over dd. Just make sure you test a restore of your backup.

[rex]

Originally Posted by killasmurf86

check this.
http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2238

you can dump any of filesystems (entire filesystem)
simplified example
dump .... / - will dump root, but won't dump /var, /usr etc

I've not read the article yet, but thanks, This is something what I was looking for. I'll post my question about this after trying it, but as you said it wont dump /var and /usr. This is what I read in the internet too. Generally people make /var and /usr as different partitions on their HD and / just contains the link for it but I just have 2 partitions swap and /. So if I do dump of / then shouldn't it include /var and /usr too.

[map7]

Yes it will, but it is advisable to have separate partitions for /var and /etc.

For instance if you have a print job go crazy and fill up your /var directory then your computer will not crash, it will just fill up the /var partition. The way you have it setup currently it will crash.

If you backup and restore on to a new drive you can fix this up in the process.

[graudeejs]

If you wan't to skips some dir hierarchy (in your case)
you can use (for example):

chflags nodump /tmp

to clear this flag use

chflags dump /tmp

[rex]

Originally Posted by map7

Yes it will, but it is advisable to have separate partitions for /var and /etc.

For instance if you have a print job go crazy and fill up your /var directory then your computer will not crash, it will just fill up the /var partition. The way you have it setup currently it will crash.

If you backup and restore on to a new drive you can fix this up in the process.

How big should I keep /var and /etc. Is there any thing else that I should keep separate.

[graudeejs]

Originally Posted by rex

How big should I keep /var and /etc. Is there any thing else that I should keep separate.

don't separate /etc

/var can be very different....
for destop 1G could be enough
for server few G's


I got 1G and currently using 145M (i use fbsd as destop)