How to backup root filesystem the correct way....

[Daniel B. Thurman]

>From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com
>[mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com]On Behalf Of Steve Ringwald
>Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 5:39 PM
>To: For users of Fedora Core releases
>Subject: Re: How to backup root filesystem the correct way....
>
>
>
>
>Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
>> I am familiar with the unix dump and restore programs from my hey-dey
>> and system admin used these for backing up individual 
>filesystems to tape
>> using these programs. But apparently, someone here told me that using
>> dump/restore is not the preferred way and said that Torvald quoted
>> that tar is better than D/R because it is not maintained nor 
>current and
>> may be fraught with failures.... and recommended that TAR be used.
>>
>> Geez....
>>
>> Well since I have a /boot problem, i.e. I blithely used a 
>partition of /, including
>> /boot and a seperate partition for swap (i.e. two 
>partitions) of which my BIOS
>> may eventually fail to see /boot, so I need to correct this 
>mistake. But before I do,
>> I need to backup my main boot drive by copying its contents 
>to my 2nd drive
>> so that I can recover if all hell breaks loose.
>>
>> So... 
>>
>> When I used /tar this way:
>>
>> tar zcvf root.tgz -C /<second-disk> /
>>
>> It appears that everything gets tarred up but there are many errors
>> put out (such as sockets and such) but eventually after a long time,
>> the final error at the end (whereever that may be) reports:
>>
>> tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
>>
>> Hmm... cryptic as heck. But the bottom line is that there is no
>> guarantee that all the files are being properly backed up.  Seems
>> that this is very unreliable.
>>
>> Perhaps I should just use dump | restore to backup the filesystem
>> to another filesystem (disk) would be better?  What is the 
>reccommended
>> way to backup the root disk to my second backup disk?
>>   
>Daniel,
>
>Well, what I would do is boot off the rescue image on the install cd.
>
>Partition the destination disk (I would use fdisk and 
>mkfs.ext3/mkswap) 
>then mount those partitions as /destination, /destination/boot, etc. 
>Mount your src partitions in a src directory (or whatever) /src, 
>/src/boot, etc.
>
>Then go to the source directory and type:
>
>find . | cpio -pmd /destination (or you could use rsync, or tar -cvp)
>
>Then all you need to do is install grub on the destination 
>drive, update 
>your /destination/fstab, and delete /destination/{mtab,blkid}*.
>
>Unmount the partitions, powerdown, pop out the source drive, and the 
>destination should be good to go.
>
>Hope that this helps!
>Steve
>

OK, my major issue right now is getting GRUB to work and
I am not able to get GRUB to see my /boot partition I am
assuming since it cannot find the configuration files nor
can it boot.

I have:

/dev/hda1 /boot
/dev/hda2 /
/dev/hda3 swap

Documentation says to install grub as follows:

1) Boot off rescue CD
2) chroot /mnt/sysimage
3) grub-install /dev/hda

But therein lies my problem I think.  Is it supposed to be:

3) grub-install /dev/hda1   OR
3) grub-install --root-directory=/ /dev/hda?
3) grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda?

Do I have to somehow install the MBR on /dev/hda or
is this part of GRUB's job?

Thanks!
Dan

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