Howto: Easy Full System Backup and Restore

Hello together,

i did an backup following the HowTo from the first side. The destination was a external HDD which is formatted in FAT32. When I do the Backups with the settings shown on the first side, I get Errors like "Operation not permitted" (I startet fwbackups as su). When I do the same, but changing from "Copy of the files and folders" to "Archive", everything works fine.

So my questions are:
- What's the source of this problem? (2 pages before I've read something about problems with FAT32, but (as I understood) this was another problem).
- Is there any disadvantage in doing the backup as "Archive"?

Thank you.

Best wishes from Bavaria (where Beer is drunk from 1-litre-glasses),
Markus

 

Markus: fat32 does not preserve permissions and ownership of files, which is crucial for a Linux based operating system. The reason an archive backup works is because an archive is able to preserve permissions inside the archive, as long as you then extract it to a file system that also preserves such permissiopns (usually ext2/ext3)

There aren't any disadvantages to the archive method per se, just that archiving and compressing will take considerably more time on the modest Atom processor. The flip side is - permissions are preserved, and you save space.

 

thank you for your fast and qualified answer.

 

annafil, is it possible if I add /media/JHED folder in the Add Folder?

I mean will it work? It might be convenient since I never remove my ext2 formatted sdhc card on the left side.

 

Hi, Jinx022, et al-

OK, I confess my ignorance- I'm a Linux newbie, so be gentle. My goal here is to make a ful system backup.

I've used unetbootin & PING to make my 8gb USB flash drive bootable (great instructions on this, BTW). I've created a directory on the flash drive for backups, called ironically enough, BACKUPS. All is good and I can boot to the flashdrive, and get to the menus.

1st menu- Hit enter or let it auto boot
2nd menu (text)- Enter to get to the PING interface
3rd menu- ENTER (after reading of course)
4th menu- I select Reboot
5th menu- I select Local Disk/Partition
6th menu (partitions to backup)- I select sda1 (Linux) (lost+found, proc, sys......)
7th menu-(where to store backups)- I select sdb1 (W95, FAT32) (Backups)

At this point, I get a brief text screen saying that "/mnt/dos/ not mounted" ..and then..
:?: :?:
8th menu- (Enter a root directory containing your data)- thinking that I should type "\" here
9th menu- I select "Create_New_Image"
10th menu (enter name of new image)- I enter "AAO_12132008" for example and hit enter
11th menu- I select "gzip"
12th menu- I select "no"
13th menu- "no" again

then.. several screens flash by, the 1st of which appears to be some kind of progress indicator, total time of perhaps 1 or 2 seconds, then back to text & system restarts

Yep, I've done something wrong, but I know not what. Could somebody please point me in the corrct direction here :?: :?:

Thanks in advance, Larry

 

I haven't used the program you're talking about, but the root directory on linux is "/" (forward slash) and not "\" (backslash). That might be part of the problem?

 

Hey 6---

Thanks. I'll give that a shot. Us newbies are prone to simple mistakes like that.


Larry

 

Thanks for this, it has been a priceless resource for me.

There are quite a few reasons why this backup method is very viable, for myself even being an advanced linux user, there are great benefits to having a complete tarball and/or rsync backup. First and foremost, this backup can be done while running the machine with little effort or external tools on the user's behalf. For instance, one could without so much as a reboot place a fresh usb thumb drive in the comp and make a full backup, then take the drive out and completely forget about it until needed.

Besides all of that, I'd really like the OP to edit his post. There are 2 huge descrepencies that made it difficult for me to follow, and I doubt newbies to linux would have been able to figure it out the same way as I was able to.

#1 sudo does not work. As discussed in the thread, for whatever reason, sudo isn't enough. I hope dearly that there is a fix for this, but in the mean time you can not back up a drive (atleast to my knowledge) via launching the icon which has been modified to use sudo.]

#2 fat32 can't store permissions, therefore can not be used with rsync. To be honest, this and the first issue really should be fixed in the program itself as it should know these things. In the end though, it is worth reminding people to use a tar file for backing up onto a fat32 formatted drive. I also have a suspicion that ntfs wont work at all (unless advances have been made to writing to ntfs that I'm unaware of, highly possible).

Question: Does this guide take into account the expansion slot, and back it up appropriately? Also, if it does, it is not inadvertantly making 2 copies of the same data due to the weird mounting linpus does is it? I hope that the answers would be "Yes", and "No, if so, it would really help skeptics like me to add this information to your original guide

Suggestion: Provide suggestions for the best media/filesystem to use when using this procedure. Unfortunately, FAT32 I am kindof stuck with since it is the only FS that works well between linux and windows that I can tell. Maybe I have made a huge oversight though (sure hope so).

I like your guide, and thanks for it! I hope to get this AA1 in such a shape that my mother can use it as a daily PC. That is a tall order!

 

AA1 Backup

An update--

For some reason, backing up thru PING never worked for me. Despite the wonderful support & help from members of the forum, it always bombed out as I stated in my earlier post.

BUT.... finally came across a VERY SIMPLE, flawless backup solution on Macles' blog (http://macles.blogspot.com/). Perfect for us newbies, AA1 Backup is a bootable USB backup solution and its installer automagically configures the USB flash drive in ONE step. To quote Macles "AA1BACKUP is a backup solution for the Acer Aspire One based on free and open source software. It makes an exact copy of the drive, bit for bit, and therefore works with any file system, partition table or operating systems. And to emphasize its operating system independence it can be installed from either Linux or Windows."

Once the installer is finished, reboot the AAO to the USB flash drive, select BACKUP, hit enter and away it goes. RESTORE is just as easy.

I encourage y'all to download it and try it out!

Larry

 

Anyone that has downloaded the windows file, could you possibly upload it somewhere, seems the link Macle's one keeps coming up "bandwidth exceeded" error. This seems to be just the ticked for a free and easy backup solution. TIA

 

Guess he misunderestimated how popular this solution would be It really is foolproof- I should know, I are one :lol:

When I get home from work tonight, I'll see if I can attach the file (if I still have it) to a forum post. Of course, by that time, the URL- which is now temporarily removed from Macles' blog- may be back online.

Larry

 

I see now on Macles* site he changed the download location for that file to here

I've DL it and installed it on a 8GB Kingston Data Traveler and I just finished backing up my system, took about 20mins, a great Christmas present from Macles* indeed.

 

...and maybe yet another way is this guy http://clonezilla.org/ which this weeks Computeractive has an article on and claims it works fine for Linux...

Just in case anyone else is interested :roll:

Cheers,
Rowantree

 

check out this link. I havent tried the RESTORE but BACKUP worked like a charm:

http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/12/acer ... ackup.html

 

'Morning,

All the links to the images are broken! :cry:

 

I thought I would just report back that Clonezilla works just fine.

Happy New Year to all

 

I can confirm the restore works perfectly as well

This is truly fantastic, and the best and only backup solution you will ever need for AA1 8Gb SSD.

 

I appreciate this post, and have installed FWBAckups. However your instructions on what folders to choose apears in the post as two image files that are not visible in any of my browsers. Can you please type the names of the folders needed for a full system backup?

Thanks, JOJ

 

annafil

Do you just select the "/" folder or all folders (your pictures are not working)?

 

Because I cannot see your screenshot of the folder/s to choose I did the following.
I have My Disk selected on the left column and then click "open," hoping that this will select all on the disk. The result is that I see /mnt/home in the path column of the back up set. Does this do a full backup?

thanks, JOJ