[CentOS] The equivalent of Ghosting the system

Wed Jan 31 05:34:43 UTC 2007
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

Todd Cary wrote:
> If I were to lose my main hard drive, I would like to have the 
> opportunity to do the same as I can do using Windows: restore from my 
> USB and have a working system.
>
> If I were to rsync everything on the main drive (excluding the backup 
> drive, of course and a few other directories) to my USB drive, could I 
> restore using some CD based version of Linux e.g. Knoppix?


I tend to use dump / restore for full filesystem backups.   Probably 
something I got in the habit of doing when I was administrating Solaris 
systems (where its ufsdump, ufsrestore)

    init 1
    umount /boot /var /home
    dump 0uzf /mnt/root.dump.z  /
    dump 0uzf /mnt/boot.dump.z  /boot
    dump 0uzf /mnt/var.dump.z  /var
    dump 0uzf /mnt/home.dump.z  /home
...


to restore, boot a live or rescue CD, partition the new drive,  mount 
the media with the dumps, and...

    mkfs /dev/sda2 && mount /dev/sda2 /new
    cd /new && restore rvf /mnt/root.dump.z

    mkfs /dev/sda1 && mount /dev/sda1 /new/boot
    cd /new/boot && restore rvf /mnt/boot.dump.z

    mkfs /dev/sda3 && mount /dev/sda3 /new/var
    cd /new/var && restore rvf /mnt/var.dump.z

etc.   you also need to ensure the master boot record and partition boot 
record are properly setup on the drive.