Packages back-up

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello!
Maybe this is a dumb question or is in the wrong forum section (probably).
Is there any way of backing up the installed apps and packages form yast for future system reinstall or creating a new DVD/CD image of the actual system state? Like (Windows) Factory restore DVD?
I have always wanted to do something like these on Suse but never made it.

Any help would be appreciated.
Tks
Juliano Franz

2

Unless you told yast/zypper to save packages they are unlikely to be kept.

All 1 entries tagged Zypper, Mike’s blag this seems to have a work around but you won’t want the last bit. You’ll need to modify the dry run for reinstall

so it would be install a search for installed, then a dry run.

You’ll have to do the bug shooting but something like
zypper in $(rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}
") --dry-run

Then find the zypper cache and copy it out but I suspect you’ll have a fair bit being downloaded. Also make sure you have enough space or can solve where it is caching to.

Then you can use cloning software(dar was one I briefly played with(though it looks like kde4 hasn’t got the gui yet)) or I believe lvm has the ability to create snapshots.

3

Even if there were a way, you would need to do incremental backups every week to keep the system up-to-date.

In the end you could spend far more time keeping your backup copy up-to-date than you would doing a fresh install followed by an update from the repositories.

4

So there isn’t a easy way… I was thinking on creating a system image like Norton Ghost does. There is any programs (like Ghost?) that reads ext3 partitions?
tks

5

There is a very easy way: the ‘dd’ command. This allows you to create copies of entire disks and partitions. Ideally you would have an empty extra hdd. Let’s assume you now have one hdd /dev/sda and a new empty disk, same size, then the following command:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

would make an exact copy of the first disk to the second. With dd you can even copy the MBR from one disk to another, so there you are.

But…this has to be done as root. First READ READ READ, then READ READ READ, do some small tests that won’t harm, then do the job. I use this at a customer; install, update, configure on one machine, dd it to the others disk by disk. Does 15 machines in a couple of hours.