how do i backup all my data and restore?

[Emiliano Brunetti]

On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 15:39, David L Norris wrote:
> > I tried once to do a backup and restore of /home only, but i anyway lost
> > some valuable stuff (old emails that never got correcly restored,
> > personal information within web browser and so on). I wish there was a
> > way to do this so that i don't loose all the time i spent configuring my
> > system. ;)
> 
> cp has an archive option:
>   cp -a /home /somewhere
> 
> I keep nightly backups of /etc using tar in a cron job:
>   tar --create --ignore-failed-read --owner=root --group=root --gzip
> --file=/home/backup/critical-${HOSTNAME}.tgz --backup=numbered /etc

I'll try, thanks. Did you ever try a restore too? Did it work? I tried
once with 'cp -a' but when i tried to restore, many of local
configuration were unusable and i had to personalize again everything.
;( Maybe i did something wrong...

> > Any hint?
> 
> In the future, place /home on its own partition.  Then you don't have to
> backup anything to install a new/updated system.  Just make sure you
> don't format it during the install process.

Well, it is on a specific partition. When i installed FC1, it was just
for a test. Now i want to stay with it, so i need some 'fine tuning',
namely /home is too small and i need to resize. Well, there was no way.
Neither parted or qtparted worked with ext3, Pmagic is not a option and
so i thought about reinstalling.

Thanks a lot

E.