I've just got SuSE PRO 7.3 and would like to install on my DELL minitower GX110 home computer in place of Linux RED HAT 7.0 I'm a Physics graduate student with basically no time to learn about computers ... I just use them for code development. Anyway, a kind gentleman emailed me the instructions in the following. Everything went fine up to creating the ISO image. But when I tried to record the ISO imaga onto the CD-R using the "cdrecord" command as instruted to do, Linux responded that it cannot find the SCSI drive. Also the command "cdrecord -scanbus" aborted returnng the same message. Now I'm stuck ! I've downloaded Chap. 2 and 3 from the web site http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html but I cannot figure out how much I will need to use from that as my Linux RED HAT problem is not clear to me. All what I can say is that if I switch to WINDOWS (I have both operating systems that I can use alternatively on my home computer) then the CD-writer works with no problem at all !!! Unluckily I have no network connectivity from Linux so far (while I have it on Windows) so I cannot port the ISO image from Linux to WINDOWS and record it there. I would greatly appreciate anyone's help to move on. Thank you in advance for your attention. Maura E.M.
1) tar the project and /home like so (as root):
# cd / # mkdir -p /tmp/backup # tar cf /tmp/backup/project_`date -I`.tar /path/to/project # tar cf /tmp/backup/home_`date -I`.tar /home
This creates files named like "project_2001-12-12.tar" and "home_2001-12-12.tar", respectively. Aren't you doing daily backups yet? ;)
2) Create an ISO CD-ROM image including those files:
# mkisofs -r -o /tmp/backup/backup_`date -I`.iso /tmp/backup/
3) Burn that to a CD-R (probably as root):
# cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -data \ > /tmp/backup/backup_2001-12-12.iso
You should read the CD-Writing HOWTO for more details:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html
If cdrecord is too cumbersome, you could use XCD-Roast to burn the image. I still think you should use tar to make the backups and mkisofs to make the CD image, though. It's time-consuming, but safer that way.