On 08/22/2014 03:21 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:
Hylton, you will want to use tar or cpio, not dd.
Why do you say to not use dd?
dd is simply not designed to backup directory trees worth of data.
If you want to backup a full partition at the raw physical sector level, it is designed to do that.
+1
That said however, I do suppose though that using tar or cpio and having one entire file is easier to move around, although without compression, HORRIBLY LARGE.
Making a dd backup of the physical drive and/or partition would be even larger!
+1
For a pure local copy, rsync should work without SSH requirements.
No 'should' about it! It always has for me
To backup /usr to /mnt/usr (on the external drive), I think this will work:
sudo rsync --archive /usr /mnt/usr
Shortform "-a" (I use "-av") is enough :-) Its an abbreviation for "-rlptgoD"
The only tricky part is knowing if you need a trailing /. ie. the command might be:
sudo rsync --archive /usr/ /mnt/usr
I always have to experiment with the trailing / everytime I use rsync.
That's "-avn". The "n" is dry run, the "v" is verbose so you can see what's happening.
I'm pretty sure that if you run rsync as root with the --archive flag it will retain the old ownership on the backup.
I'm pretty sure because it always has for me. I seem to have used rsync a lot this last year. One one occasion I used it in a way simlar to Hylton. I got a new 1T drive and put 13.1 on it. I had an extra slot on the mobo so had it there with the old drive, which was mounted on /mnt/oldisk. After basic install I created new partitions and used rsync to copy from /mnt/oldisk/home/anton/ to /home/anton I also put back the DNS, DHCP and mail, and then used dirdiff to see what in /etc/needed restoring one by one. -- "Nothing is more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things." -- Machiavelli -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org