Hi all,
Can you please tell me the way to backup OpenSUSE system (root partition) and then I can restore it from OpenSUSE Live CD (restore grub2 also)?
In YaST, there’s System Backup and Restore but I do not know how to use them.
Thanks!
Hello,
you can try use Clonezilla Live CD/USB image, it’s imaging solution like Acronis and Symantec disk imaging software, it’s able to backup whole disk or single partition including boot record.
But you need some space on backup hd/usb or external drive including network drive (NFS.SMB).
Thank you
Regards
Czeslaw M.
On 2013-11-28 14:16, n00bvn wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Can you please tell me the way to backup OpenSUSE system (root
> partition) and then I can restore it from OpenSUSE Live CD (restore
> grub2 also)?
Each person has a different method.
Me, I create images of the system partitions with dd, and rsync copies
of home and data partition. I use a big external hard disk, with a small
openSUSE bootable partition on it, and a large encrypted data partition.
For backing up grub, you need to ensure that the partition holding it is
imaged. If it is on the MBR, you need to backup several additional
sectors (perhaps 64).
You also need a method to backup and restore the partition table
including the logical partitions; for instance:
sfdisk /dev/hdd -O hdd-partition-sectors.save
sfdisk /dev/hdd -I hdd-partition-sectors.save
(from sfdisk manual)
> In YaST, there’s System Backup and Restore but I do not know how to use
> them.
I’ve never been very comfortable with them.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
On 2013-11-28 14:56, cmruk wrote:
> you can try use Clonezilla Live CD/USB image, it’s imaging solution like
> Acronis and Symantec disk imaging software, it’s able to backup whole
> disk or single partition including boot record.
Last time I looked, grub was not backed up, but instead recreated on the
target disk. That’s the reason I do not use it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Hi,
i am using **stable releases - 2.2.0-31 **and everything works perfect, restoring this backup bring me back exactly the same working system with Grub2, with LVM2 partition.
tarting /usr/sbin/ocs-sr at 2013-11-24 23:00:13 UTC...
Clonezilla image dir: /home/partimag
Shutting down the Logical Volume Manager
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/opt
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/root
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/skole+backup
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/skole+tjener+home0
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/swap_1
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/usr
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/var
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/var+opt+ltsp+swapfiles
Shutting Down logical volume: /dev/vg_system/var+spool+squid
Shutting Down volume group: vg_system
Finished Shutting down the Logical Volume Manager
The selected devices: sda
ng for data partition(s)...
Searching for swap partition(s)...
The data partition to be saved: sda1 sda5
The swap partition to be saved:
The selected devices: sda1 sda5
The following step is to save the hard disk/partition(s) on this machine as an image:
.........
.........
-> "/home/partimag/2013-11-24-23-img-skole-linux".
Shutting down the Logical Volume Manager
Shutting Down volume group: vg_system
Finished Shutting down the Logical Volume Manager
Saving block devices info in /home/partimag/2013-11-24-23-img-skole-linux/blkdev.list...
Checking the integrity of partition table in the disk /dev/sda...
Reading the partition table for /dev/sda...RETVAL=0
*****************************************************.
The first partition of disk /dev/sda starts at 2048.
Saving the hidden data between MBR (1st sector, i.e. 512 bytes) and 1st partition, which might be useful for some recovery tool, by:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/home/partimag/2013-11-24-23-img-skole-linux/sda-hidden-data-after-mbr skip=1 bs=512 count=2047
2047+0 records in
2047+0 records out
1048064 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.0344756 s, 30.4 MB/s
*****************************************************.
Saving the MBR data for sda...
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.00946608 s, 54.1 kB/s
Starting saving /dev/sda1 as /home/partimag/2013-11-24-23-img-skole-linux/sda1.XXX...
/dev/sda1 filesystem: ext4.
*****************************************************.
seems i have a luck 
thanks
Regards
Czeslaw M.
On 2013-11-28 15:46, cmruk wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> i am using *‘stable releases - 2.2.0-31’
> (http://clonezilla.org/downloads/download.php?branch=stable) *and
> everything works perfect, restoring this backup bring me back exactly
> the same working system with Grub2, with LVM2 partition.
After restoring, grub2 complains “error: no argument specified”. Why?
It says:
+++·······························
By default when an image is restored, Clonezilla will try to re-run
grub-install from the restored GNU/Linux. If it fails, e.g. you are
using i686 version of Clonezilla live, while the restored GNU/Linux is
amd64 (x86-64) OS, it will fail. Then Clonezilla will use the grub2
comes with Clonezilla live to run grub-install. The version could be
imcompatible.
·······························+±
Thus grub is not backed up, it is recreated. That is an absolute no-no
for me.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
I keep /home on it’s own drive and back it up with rsync and also put personal tweaks and edits from elsewhere in the filesystem on Dropbox.
I don’t back up anything else because simply reinstalling, without formatting /home, and then pulling over the tweaks from Dropbox is so simple. (This does mean I need to retain the original install image, which I usually burn to a DVD. Don’t count on being about to download a new install image if you manage to break things.)
(When I think about it, I copy the Dropbox tweaks to a local backup, but I typically never keep that uptodate.)
I tried CloneZilla, but the Live CD run supper slow and there’s many I/O error.
I use Clonezilla on a USB stick. Occasionally, I use it on a boot CD.
So far, it has never failed me.
I ran into a glitch, though, when I tried to recover after a failed upgrade attempt to 13.1, but that had to do with my partition scheme.
Some kind of mix-up between the MBR, the super block of the extended partition, and the PBR of the first logical partition in that extended partition, which is where my SUSE root was.
I might have avoided the problem if I had GRUB2 installed to the MBR, but I no longer needed an extended partition, so I changed to booting from a primary partition, which is more stable.
Thus, I never bothered testing the MBR install of GRUB2.
The “boot from extended partition” risk is mentioned somewhere (GRUB documentation? SUSE documentation? GNU documentation? SUSE installation notes?), but I don’t recall where and haven’t yet bothered to hunt it down again.
Clonezilla works well, don’t be afraid to use the Advanced options (even though it might sound scary by saying it is for “experts”).
Just read each option very carefully and think about it before choosing to use the option or not. Mostly, your best experience will be to stick to the default options in that dialogue, but with one or two tweaks.
When you get to the part where it gives you compression choices (gzip, bzip2, etc.), stay with the default. It makes a slightly larger file than some of the others, but gives the least headaches and runs in a fraction of the time.
Think, half an hour or an hour instead of 7 hours or so for the others.
Good luck,
-fb
On 2013-11-29 04:56, n00bvn wrote:
>
> I tried CloneZilla, but the Live CD run supper slow and there’s many I/O
> error.
Maybe bad burn.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Wht kind of IO error? When booting or when running the cloneing? if running the cloning this may indicate bad sectors. You may want to run smartctrl and see if the drive is healthy.
On 2013-11-29 20:06, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Wht kind of IO error? When booting or when running the cloneing? if
> running the cloning this may indicate bad sectors. You may want to run
> smrtctrl and see if the drive is healthy.
Oh, right! I missed that.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
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Actually I am using three partitions on my hard disk. A 15 GiB File System (/), a 470 GiB home (/home) and a 256 MiB swap one. I am a Linux’s newbie, so I would like to ask some questions. I am looking to recover my system configurations, so basically I need to backup my 15 GiB File System (Is that right?).
Is it possible to recover my File System using a USB Flash drive of 16 GiB? How to? Once I have a image how can I use it to recover my system?
Thank you!
Well all your personal stuff is on home root just holds the system. I don’t worry about the system that is easy enough to recreate but I keep my personal home system backed up. Note that your home is 470 gig even if part filled it will not fit on a single 16 gig USB
So what do your really want to backup.
My preference is to use media with sufficient capacity to hold my important files I put an ext2 formatted partition on it and use luckbackup (GUI front end for rsync) I then can backup and since it is rsync based only changed files are rewritten this saves much time. But to use rsync effectively you need to stick to Linux based file system on the backup media since Windows based one lose the permissions.
Please, when you want full attention to your question, do not hang it at the end of someone else’s old thread. Many people will not see that. And your question is seldom exectly the same as that old one (if it were you could use the solution given and not ask anything).
Hello, my intention is to backup my configurations. As I was saying before I am newbie and I am spending some time on forums to configurate my system (audio card, video card, plugins etc), so I want to prevent myself of doing all those things again.
I am very gratefull for your answer. Thank you!
ok most system configuration are in /etc
But in Linux you need to realize that there are system and user configurations. So system configurations are in /etc but each user has there own personal configurations in their home directory. I never worry that much about system configs because I maintain 2 root partitions. One for the current version and one for the next. When a new version comes out I install int the new version root and that then becomes current once I’m happy that all works ok. If I need an old config it is still on the older partitions. I only backup personal configs and personal data in my home. But becaue I have a dedicated home partition I keep my configs from one version to another by simply not formatting home at install.
Installing drivers and applications is easy enough from Yast-Software Management. And my configs for the applications are in my home even though most programs are on root (ie system)
By keeping user and system stuff separate Linux is much more rational then Windows.
Linux was designed to me mult user unlike Windows which was originally designed to be single user then bastardized to make it multiuser