[CentOS] Filesystem backup?

Javor Nikolov nikolov.javor at gmail.com
Sun Jun 21 16:58:41 UTC 2009


Without snapshots there is some risk to get inconsistent set of files when
you make a backup of live file system. In general this is a problem but I'm
not sure about your case. Actually there is another solution to this problem
shutdown the system and take the backup using bootable CD/DVD (or booting
from another OS installation).

You should unmount a file system before backing up with dd. You can also
take a look at Clonezilla which is an open-source image-backup software.

2009/6/21 Rafał Radecki <radecki.rafal at gmail.com>

> I think about using dd instead of dump? Is this an acceptable idea?
>
> 2009/6/21 Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com>
>
> At Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:49:09 +0200 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi all. I'm currently having a following problem: I have only ssh
>> connection
>> > to a CentOS 5.2 system, there are two harddiscs on it. One stores the
>> system
>> > (/ filesystem) and the other should be used to help restore the system
>> in
>> > case of first disks' failure. I thought that maybe dump would be a good
>> > utility to make it. But in only works on read-only filesystems. In one
>>
>> Dump works just fine on a read-write file system.  There is the pretty
>> much standard limitation (that applies to *all* backup methods) that
>> when backing up an 'active' file system: there will always be files that
>> will miss the backup because they were being written during the backup
>> process.
>>
>> > article I've read that making a snapshot of the / filesystem (then it
>> > wouldbe read-only) and backing it could help. But aren't snapshots
>> limited
>> > to logical volumes (LVM)?  My friend told me to use rsync to back up the
>> > entire / filesystem to the second disk and then in case o failure the
>> system
>> > from the copy should boot ok.
>> >
>> > Could anyone provide any suggestions? I don't have physical contact with
>> the
>> > machine so for example RAID 1 isn't a possible option/
>> >
>> > Any help will be very kindly appreciated.
>>
>> Make an initial dump to get the base system copied, then set up a cron
>> job to sync the disks once a day (or more frequently) with rsync.
>>
>> >
>> > With regards,
>> > R.
>> >
>> > MIME-Version: 1.0
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > CentOS mailing list
>> > CentOS at centos.org
>> > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
>> Deepwoods Software        -- Download the Model Railroad System
>> http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
>> heller at deepsoft.com       -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
>>
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