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Hi, I want to create an image of my Linux system (much like I use Norton Ghost to create a basic image of my Windows system) partially to insure against problems, partially so I can (occasionally) trash it and try something else? Can ghost do this, if not what can? Also, to do it faster, I tend to copy a whole partition to another one (quicker than across my network) but Linux (at least on my system) is composed of three partitions: boot, swap & '/' so I guess have to do a whole disk image which means I can't (easily) do that to a local disk ... any ideas? James James C. Rocks Equant Archway House Canary Wharf London E14 9SZ Phone: 0207-5226856 Fax: 0207-5126087 Mobile Phone: 07771-767405 http://www.equant.com
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James, I use Drive Image 5.0 (and 4 too actually). They both understand Linux partition types, can compress the image on the fly and so far no problems. Ghost is also an option and is preferred by others. It's just what you're comfortable with I `spose :-) I like to have a complete image though - not just / (root). That way I can rebuild the disk after a total failure. If the image is less than 700MB then burn it to a CD for safekeeping. If it's larger then use a network boot disk to start the machine and run Drive Image / Ghost from a networked-mounted share and create or restore the image there. To reduce the size of the filesystem (and therefore the resulting image) I do the following: Create an image of the whole disk first! ... then, For 8.0 (ReiserFS) to resize root partition to 500MB: boot to Suse 8 CD rescue system login as root resize_reiserfs -s 500M /dev/hda3 Then use "fdisk /dev/hda" to delete /dev/hda3. Then recreate it specifying size as +500M Reboot If you're using extfs instead then just use resize_e2fs instead of resize_reiserfs. Doddle. Damian James.Rocks@equant.com wrote:
Hi,
I want to create an image of my Linux system (much like I use Norton Ghost to create a basic image of my Windows system) partially to insure against problems, partially so I can (occasionally) trash it and try something else?
Can ghost do this, if not what can? Also, to do it faster, I tend to copy a whole partition to another one (quicker than across my network) but Linux (at least on my system) is composed of three partitions: boot, swap & '/' so I guess have to do a whole disk image which means I can't (easily) do that to a local disk ... any ideas?
James
James C. Rocks Equant Archway House Canary Wharf London E14 9SZ Phone: 0207-5226856 Fax: 0207-5126087 Mobile Phone: 07771-767405 http://www.equant.com
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-- Damian O'Hara using: SuSE Linux 8.0 11:26am up 27 days, 21:58, 16 users, load average: 0.25, 0.36, 0.19
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On May 30, 2002 07:03 am, James.Rocks@equant.com wrote:
I want to create an image of my Linux system (much like I use Norton Ghost to create a basic image of my Windows system) partially to insure against problems, partially so I can (occasionally) trash it and try something else?
Can ghost do this, if not what can? Also, to do it faster, I tend to copy a whole partition to another one (quicker than across my network) but Linux (at least on my system) is composed of three partitions: boot, swap & '/' so I guess have to do a whole disk image which means I can't (easily) do that to a local disk ... any ideas?
Ghost can do it, but it's really slow. I like Systemimager: http://www.systemimager.org It really rocks. It's fast (especially on a 100MB network), you don't need to open the case, it understands different distributions, you don't need to shut down your box to do a backup, supports RAID, and you can mess with your image while it's on the image server. I'm still using 1.4, but I understand that 2.0 has all kinds of neat configuration stuff. - -- James Oakley Engineering - SolutionInc Ltd. joakley@solutioninc.com http://www.solutioninc.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE89hQg+FOexA3koIgRAtYfAKCW2SRLiHQcv/9MCHwKHi5d28rh9gCcDkj0 oh4A7Rnorf6WJ9HG7DaOHtk= =z59a -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (3)
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Damian Ohara
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James Oakley
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James.Rocks@equant.com