How do we back up Home for self and others

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Received upgrade disk in mail yesterday :slight_smile:

Still no idea how to BACK UP all the HOMEs !

HOME - USERNAME understand is where stored are emails and files for myself and others.

Whilst long term user of computers am NOT technical, just follow clear instructions well :wink:

Am NOT sure how to copy/burn the HOMEs to disk for backing them up in case of errorsā€¦

Whilst do sign in as ADMIN, as you can guess is not often and rarely for anything this complicated !-)

2

simplest method

get to a superuser (root) prompt
su -
cd /home
tar czf userName.tar.gz userName/
.
.
.
.
tar czf userName22.tar.gz userName22/

then you can cp *gz yourhome/

burn to dvd or cd at will (or ftp them to another local computer)

to restoreā€¦ create the user first explode the folder inside of their docs or somewhere so they can grab their data. I wouldnā€™t overly suggest just

rm -rf /home/userDirectory
cp userBackup.tar.gz /home
tar xzf userBackup.tar.gz

you could over write some user settings you may actually want or need.

3

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Well, Iā€™d probably do the same but not do it from within /home since
that means when you extract it you get your current working directory
filled with all of those directories, potentially messing up your
desktop, etc. if you want to backup everything at once.

cd /
tar -cvf /tmp/yourHomes.tar /home

Be sure to copy the resulting file (/tmp/yourHomes.tar) somewhere else.
Also note that by default SUSE partitions /home separately so you donā€™t
necessarily need to wipe it to do an installation, though a backup is
always a prudent option of which you should take advantage.

Good luck.

wshawn wrote:
> simplest method
>
> get to a superuser (root) prompt
> su -
> cd /home
> tar czf userName.tar.gz userName/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFJSC+X3s42bA80+9kRAioaAJ0XoovPvWEAJ5KpAr0ZTxotIJJBbwCfYCtb
wuILZRAX2V+Qc09c1k/imgs=
=SMp/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

4

ā€œBe sure to copy the resulting file (/tmp/yourHomes.tar) somewhere else.ā€

But if it is over 4GB, donā€™t try to store it on a FAT32 partition as there is a 4GB file size limit;)

BTW, you could also try & image the /home partition; check out Partimage:)

5

username1 self (the Admin user)
username2 user2 (12 year old user, likes windows)
username3 user3 (6 year old happy user)

Logged in as SU, then :

linux-lrqs:/home # tar czf username1.tar.gz usename1/
tar: username1: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

linux-lrqs:/home # tar czf username2.tar.gz username2/
tar: username2/.Devhelp.username2: socket ignored

linux-lrqs:/home # tar czf username3.tar.gz username3/
tar: username3/.Devhelp.username3: socket ignored

linux-lrqs:/home # tar czf username3.tar.gz username3/
linux-lrqs:/home #

linux-lrqs:/home # ls
lost+found username1.tar.gz username2.tar.gz username3.tar.gz
username1 username2 username3
linux-lrqs:/home #

username1.tar.gz 45 bytes <ā€“definitely a bit small ?
username2.tar.gz 71.2 MB <ā€“socket ignored, whats a socket ?
username3.tar.gz 616.9 MB

linux-lrqs:/home # tar czf username1.tar.gz usename1/
R
OH a spelling mistake - left out an R in use*name1 !

Try again :wink:

linux-lrqs:/home # tar czf username1.tar.gz username1/
tar: username1/.beagle/socket: socket ignored

Seems busy doing somethingā€¦

OH should I first have deleted the ā€œusername1.tar.gzā€ 45 bytes ?

Seems replaced the ā€œusername1.tar.gzā€

Hmmā€¦

ā€œtar: username1/.beagle/socket: socket ignoredā€

Was it important to copy my "username1/.beagle/socket: " ?

linux-lrqs:/home # ls
lost+found username1.tar.gz username2.tar.gz username3.tar.gz
username1 username2 username3

linux-lrqs:/home # cp *gz username1/
linux-lrqs:/home #

home shows sizes looking OK :slight_smile:

username1.tar.gz 2.6 GB tar archive (gzip-compressed)
username2.tar.gz 71.2 MB tar archive (gzip-compressed)
username3.tar.gz 616.9 MB tar archive (gzip-compressed)

Trid to burn to a blank new dvd/cd however it stopped apparently before started to burn anythingā€¦

tried to start againā€¦ .however will not start with same diskā€¦

6

Pop Up Message:

      Nautilus cannot display "burn:///".

      Please select another viewer and try again.
7

There are number of simple-to-use tools in the software repositories for doing backups, many with a gui. The above all use tar, and are just fine. But there are good alternatives worth a look, too.

8

Well the installation finally finished, certainly this NON Tech user experienced a few awkard moments during the installationā€¦ More about this tomorrow when get chance find if have problemsā€¦

prior: openSUSE 10.3

now: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (x86-64)

Glad I tried to back up the HOMES as can not see themā€¦ guess it cleaned the entire Hard Drive not just the partition the Linux openSUSE was inā€¦

My username2 is complaining about dinner not being readyā€¦ and username3 is wanting to get on hear as is his play time whilst I do dinnerā€¦

More later/tomorrow :wink: