browsing backup images?
edgue
Coming from Windows I am used to create full disk
backups using Acronis Trueimage. Kewl thing -
you can backup your complete disk as background
task and browse the image later on to retrieve
single files.
Unfortunately our company doesnt have
similar software licenses for Linux; so I am
looking for free products to use. Any hint
is welcome ...
So, I would like to backup my partitions to an
image file. I know I can do that with partimage
for example. But afaik I can only restore the full
image with partimage. Are there other products
that allow backup/restore of full partitions - but
also to access stuff within the image file?
thx,
Georg Horn
> Are there other products that allow backup/restore of full partitions
> - but also to access stuff within the image file?
The standard tools are tar and cpio. rsync can be used to mirror a
filesystem. Amanda is a more complex backup solution for unix/linux.
Bye,
Georg
Douglas Mayne
loopback images can be mounted under linux. man losetup.
If you really want offline image backups, and want to use the minimum
space required (say, only 15G of a 250G disk partition is in use), then I
would use a loopback container. The steps to doing this are as follows:
1.Allocate the container with adequate size.
2. Setup the loopback device pointing to the container (file).
3. Format the loopback device and mount it.
4. Fill the container with the data being backed up. I usually use tar.
The bonus is that once this basic approach is understood, it is easy to
add other elements, such as, backing up to an encrypted container (device
mapper).
If you can afford the time and space to backup the complete image,
then you can just use the "dd" command to make an exact copy to a target
file/device.
Caution: backing up a filesystem which is mounted read-write can be
tricky. I often use a live CD to "get out of the way" and mount the device
read only. YMMV.
--
Douglas Mayne
ray
FWIW - you can easily mount a partition image via loopback and access it
normally. It's also possible to backup an entire disk and then mount the
individual partitions via loopback - discussed in a recent Linux Pro
magazine issue.
John Thompson
I use dump/restore for this. It's not image based, and it doesn't have a
pointy-clicky gui, but you can interactively browse the dump file using
shell commands like "ls" and "cd" and select files for restoration in
that manner.
--
John (jo...@os2.dhs.org)
Robert Glueck
rsync probably comes closest to what you want to do. E.g.
$ rsync -av --progress --stats --delete --ignore-errors
/home/user/ /media/disk-1/home/user
You can then browse /media/disk-1/home/user
For fast uncompressed backup of an entire partition as an
image, I use partimage, run from the PartedMagic CD, e.g.
# partimage -z0 -o -d save /dev/sda2 system.partimg
edgue
> rsync probably comes closest to what you want to do. E.g.
I guess I forgot to mention that I have one problem:
my company provides LAN space for backup ... but they allow only a
SINGLE file in there.
They setup their samba server to block any attempts to create a second
file.
(interesting policy: you have to overwrite your old backup in order to
create a new
one ... when your disc crashes while backing up, you are screwed).
So I guess I would need something like a huge file out there
(limitation is
just about number of files, not about size ;-)
... and then some kind of loop device pointing inside that file.
Not sure about performance in such a context.
Maybe I am better of using partimage ;-)
thanks for all the hints; gave me some good ideas,