Steve wrote regarding 'RE: [SLE] Ok, if SuSE's backup program isn't well liked, what's a good one?' on Fri, Aug 13 at 08:53:
Let's say that you copied your root file system to another removable drive using cp (with -pR) or rsync, and your primary drive fails. All you would need to do is to pop in the copy with one caveat, and that is the boot loader. The boot loader installs in the MBR and points to the stage2. With LILO, the second stage is the kernel, with GRUB it is the stage2 boot. However, you should be able to boot from floppy or CD. Or, better still, you can always write the MBR by using the rescue disk.
So, in general, as long as I have some sort of complete copy of the file system, I'd just need to re-partition the drive, install grub, restore tar, system back up and running?
I presume tar'ing things preserves permissions, owners, groups, etc....
Check the man page for details - tar does lots of things. You want to use the --preserve option, and probably a few others. Note that the -P option, while appearing nice on the surface, will present problems if you mount your root drive somewhere other than / on a recovery system. :) --Danny